'Mad About You' Is The Latest Show To Be Pitched For Revival
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Mad About You could be the next TV sitcom to go the revival route. On the heels of the massive success of ABC's Roseanne reboot, a limited-run revival of the 1990s NBC sitcom starring Helen Hunt and Paul Reiser is being pitched by Sony Pictures TV to various outlets, including rival network CBS, according to TV Line.
NBC reportedly passed on the Mad About You revival immediately, but CBS executive vice president Thom Sherman confirmed to TV Line that the Mad About You revival "has been pitched" to his network and is "still being discussed."
Mad About You originally aired for seven seasons on NBC, from 1992 to 1999. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the potential eighth season of the Emmy-nominated sitcom would star Reiser and Hunt and would be set in the present day. The revived series would follow the now middle-aged Paul and Jamie Buchman, as they face an empty nest in the wake of their 17-year-old daughter Mabel's college acceptance.
That particular pitch would mean that the 1999 Mad About You series finale, which ended with a flash-forward episode that was set 22 years in the future with an adult Mabel (Janeane Garofalo), would be disregarded in the same way that Roseanne's original finale was disregarded for ABC's recent reboot.
Paul Reiser is clearly on board with the idea of a Mad About You reboot, but that hasn't always been the case. The actor previously revealed that the flash-forward finale was intended to wrap up the Buchman's story for good so there would be no temptation to ever go back to the characters.
"One of the things we did deliberately in the finale was that we jumped ahead in the future. We saw where they went," Reiser told Variety in 2016. "Part of why we did that was to avoid the temptation of going back…When you watch a reunion (show), all you do is say 'Wow do they look older.'"
But last year, Reiser changed his tune on a potential Mad About You revival, telling People he would be "open" to the idea if people are still interested in Paul and Jamie's story. Reiser added that the idea of kids growing up and leaving the house was appealing to him.
Helen Hunt revealed she would be interested to check in on these characters 20 years later and said she and Reiser were in talks about "how to make [a revival] work and not wreck it."
If the Mad About You revival does see the light of day at CBS, it would join a roster loaded with classic TV reboots. CBS has already given the green light to a revival of Murphy Brown with most of its original cast. In addition, a reboot of Magnum P.I. is in the works, while revived versions of MacGyver, Hawaii Five-O and S.W.A.T. have all seen success on the network.
You can see a clip from NBC's original Mad About You series below.