Over fifty years since the vampire Barnabas Collins took his first bite in television’s Dark Shadows, thirty since a one-season revival was attempted on NBC, and fifteen years after The WB network commissioned and passed on a reboot, The CW network is attempting to put another stake into the classic supernatural drama that has captivated fans for decades. Coming from writer Mark B. Perry and the children of franchise creator Dan Curtis, it was announced back in September that a new Dark Shadows would be reincarnated for a potential spot on the network’s 2020-2021 schedule.
Now, not every pilot put into development is sure to be filmed, and not every pilot filmed becomes a series, as fans of Dark Shadows sadly saw from The WB in 2004. There has not been any more talk about the project since the September announcement; The CW normally does not announce pilot orders for projects that will actually be filmed until late January at the earliest. That means, at the end of the day this article could be moot, but this writer is at least hopeful it goes somewhere, especially since, rather than telling the same story over and over again, Dark Shadows: Reincarnation (as it is said to be called) is a “modern-day continuation” of the original series, a la Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The original Dark Shadows had its fair share of iconic characters and performances. Joan Bennett’s Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, for example, was the gold standard for a regal matriarch type who had a number of secrets of her own. While very capable actors have played that role, it was very much of its time, as Tim Burton may have discovered, choosing to make his theatrical Dark Shadows take place in the 1970s, but also, every character to play the role since has, fairly or unfairly, been compared to Bennett. Now, I am sure that this series will bring characters like Barnabas Collins, the werewolf Quentin, and the witch Angelique to present day, hence the “reincarnation,” but beyond that, the setting could be new.
Every time Dark Shadows has been revived on TV so far, it’s been telling familiar stories, even with minor changes. If you’re a fan of the show, you know the drill: Barnabas returns after centuries of being locked up, Willie Loomis is the one who breaks him out, and he sees that Maggie or Victoria is the spitting image of his lost love Josette. Fans watching The CW already saw a variation of that story on The Vampire Diaries, where the Salvatore brothers encountered Elena Gilbert, herself a perfect doppelganger for their beloved Katherine who they knew in centuries past. Unfortunately, the “familiar stories” thing also led to cramming too much story into an hour: The 2004 pilot covered what might have taken the original series 200 episodes to tell. But, aside from perhaps some original audio recordings from Big Finish, do we know what became of the Collins family in the year 2020? Does David own the house? Is Carolyn still alive? Was Victoria indeed Elizabeth’s daughter? Was Barnabas cured? How will they explain the inevitable young and hot Barnabas reincarnated? So many questions to ask… and many might not be important, since again, it’s a new story. (I should point out that 2004 DS pilot writer Mark Verheiden wanted to do a new story, with a grown-up David Collins. “My mandate to myself was to make it fresh,” Verheiden told Fangoria soon after. But, it seems the choice was instead made by Dan Curtis to retell the same story again.)
If it is indeed a direct continuation of the original Dark Shadows in a way, this could also reignite interest in the classic series, which might be a good “get” for The CW Seed or something like that if people want to see it. The original show is the original show. It cannot be duplicated. So why try? This isn’t to say I don’t want to see the classic Dark Shadows characters at all: Of course I do. The original series jumped through time to 1795 and a few other eras. Heck, maybe in a Crisis on Infinite Earths type fashion, the 1990 and 2004 series, the original show and two movies, and the Tim Burton movie might have been “Parallel Times” of their own. Or, what if a character ended up meeting the characters of 1967, much like Victoria Winters got herself stuck in 1795? The possibilities are endless.
Revisiting an old franchise or world can, admittedly, be tricky, as fans of Star Wars know well enough after seeing the conclusion of that recent movie trilogy. It was, however, fun to see some old friends and locations again, and to see that world grow even more. Here’s the thing: Dark Shadows was the vampire franchise before we had Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Twilight, or any of that. That’s another thing to think about, especially in light of The CW’s recent Nancy Drew reboot: How does Nancy Drew stand out in a world where the audience grew up with characters like Veronica Mars and Betty Cooper? The same thing applies here: What makes Dark Shadows special? To me, it’s family, and legacy, and the comments by writer Mark B. Perry seem to make it sound like he feels the same way, but there’s also the question of how to present “family” and “legacy” in a world that we literally have a series called Legacies on the same network, spun off from a series that was all about a family of vampires.
Best of all, a cast of new characters offers Dark Shadows a diversity the series just didn’t have in 1966 or even some of its later incarnations. Even though there were some notable gay actors in the original series, there were no gay characters that I’m aware of, and I don’t recall seeing a single person of color on the original serial. That had been rectified a little bit in later incarnations, but there was still quite a way to go. A new story, a new time, and new characters could afford all of that. I’m really hopeful this show happens so a new generation can enjoy this premier serial the same way that I did. We shall see if The CW bites.
