From 'Frasier' to 'How I Met Your Father,' the do's and don'ts of rebooting a beloved TV show: 'Remember that time has passed,' expert says

It's bound to happen: A beloved television show will eventually get the reboot treatment years or, in some cases, decades down the line — whether audiences asked for it or not. But going back to the TV gold mine of the past doesn't automatically guarantee success in the present. So why does it continue to happen?

"Nostalgia sells," Lorraine Ali, television critic for the Los Angeles Times, told Yahoo Entertainment. "If you can grab an audience that was invested in the show before but update it to pull in new viewers, then grand. You've got a winning formula without having to come up with something entirely new."

Recent revivals such as …And Just Like That, Max's update of Sex And the City starring Sarah Jessica Parker; Paramount+'s latest Frasier reboot with Kelsey Grammer; and the just-canceled How I Met Your Mother spin-off How I Met Your Father, are examples of the mixed results that come with revisiting classics for a new audience. There's potentially more high-profile reboots to come, including a possible return to the Suits universe in the wake of the legal drama's Netflix resurgence.

Jerry Seinfeld teased that a Seinfeld-related project was in the works during an Oct. 7 stand-up show. The sitcom, which co-starred Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander and Michael Richards, wrapped up a nine-season NBC run in 1998 with a divisive series finale. "Something is going to happen that has to do with that ending," Seinfeld said. "Just what you are thinking about, [co-creator] Larry [David] and I have also been thinking about. So, you’ll see." (Louis-Dreyfus, for her part, was not aware of Seinfeld's plans.)

"When a reboot works, it's a miracle," Ali said of the challenges to recapture the magic of a past series. "When you're doing a reboot, you run the risk of alienating people who loved it in the first place. In one way, it's obvious and simplistic to take something that worked before and make it work again. In another way, it's really, really hard to do."

Yahoo Entertainment spoke with four experts, including showrunners behind two current television reboots, about the do's and don'ts of reviving classic properties.

Don't: Assume name recognition alone will lead to success

A television show may have past goodwill — an intangible asset that can't be formulated or planned — but that should only be one part of the equation when rebooting a familiar property.

"[The TV landscape] is so crowded in terms of trying to get attention, that anything that comes with presold name recognition is perceived as having value," Brian Lowry, media critic at CNN, told Yahoo Entertainment.

"Whatever edge you think you can get in the easiest way possible, meaning not having to reinvent the wheel," is vital, Ali said. "[A reboot is] its own self-sustaining, less risky way to put a scripted show out there."

What may have been a popular watercooler show years ago does not necessarily mean it will garner the same reaction today (See: Max's Gossip Girl revival, canceled after two seasons). But with an abundance of shows for audiences to choose from, remakes have a built-in allure that give them a leg up on the competition. Everything else is up to the creative team to make a reboot worth a viewer's investment.

"Frasier's a great example. Frasier was a great show and it ended in a perfectly appropriate place," Lowry said. "I don't think anyone was clamoring for it to come back but I can see why, for Paramount+, it's a nice way to draw attention to their service."

Do: Find the balance between the old and the new

"What usually works is some kind of middle ground where you bring something new to it, but don't make it so different that people don't recognize it," Lowry said.

For Night Court showrunner Dan Rubin, who brought the 1980s sitcom into the modern era, it was vital to stay true to the elements of the original while updating it through today's lens. In the revival, John Larroquette returns as Dan Fielding, now a public defender, while Melissa Rauch's Abby Stone, daughter of the late Harry Stone, takes over her father's seat as judge in a New York City night court.

"The tone of the original was very specific and different. It made it stand out from all the sitcoms in the '80s and '90s. The setting of a Manhattan courtroom at night allowed you to be a little weirder than other shows," Rubin told Yahoo Entertainment, acknowledging that a retread was not of interest to him. "You don't want to do the same show [as before]. Why put yourself in a position where you're trying to compete with that?"

For Rubin, it was important to show that the characters "have a past."

"You already know a lot about them or about their history," he explained. "Then it's about putting them in a new environment — certainly with the case of Dan Fielding — and see[ing] where that guy's been the past 30 years and how he's different now.”

Don't: Fear adding a twist or two

"The best example of that would be Cobra Kai, which is doing it from a series of movies as opposed to doing it from a preexisting series," Lowry said.

The Netflix series is a continuation of the original Karate Kid films of the 1980s and 1990s, and finds Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) squaring up with former foe Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), decades after the 1984 All-Valley Karate Tournament. "They did the trick of paying homage to the original and very cleverly doing that, while adding new characters, updating it and making it feel like it's its own thing," he explained.

Ali agreed, singling out Cobra Kai and The Wonder Years, which revolved around a Black middle-class family in the '60s (the show was canceled by ABC in September), as being the best at "taking the old model and putting new twists on it."

"You're trying to capture what was so great about the first one the first time around, but make it relevant now," she said.

On the flip side, sticking too closely to the original conceit without offering anything refreshing usually has an adverse effect.

"Something like How I Met Your Father, it was basically replicating the format [of How I Met Your Mother] but doing it in a way where if you didn't buy into those new characters, you were going to be indifferent to it," Lowry said. The Hulu show, which starred Hilary Duff, was canceled in September.

Do: Acknowledge that times have changed

When it comes to reboots, Rubin said "remember that time has passed." Culture evolves, as do audiences' tastes. A joke that may have worked in 1986 likely won't be received the same way in 2023.

"Characters have had evolutions and things that have happened to them that have changed them. That doesn't mean that they're a wholly new person, but no one is frozen in amber," the Night Court producer advised. "That should be rich and interesting and fun to explore, and it was for us. What you want to avoid is thinking this is going to be Season 11 and you're going to pick up where [the original series] left off."

Quantum Leap showrunner Martin Gero echoed that sentiment, saying the NBC sci-fi update — a revival of the '90s Scott Bakula series — tries to stay true to original co-creator Deborah Pratt's directive, even though it veers off on its own creative path.

"Every episode of Quantum Leap should have the four Hs: hope, humor, history and heart. That was important for us to maintain. What we're trying to bring to the show now is all that, as well as a bigger scope and sense of adventure," he told Yahoo.

Do: Know when to step away

Not every successful TV show from the past needs to be remade. One of the biggest lessons is knowing when to let the original live on in its former glory, instead of force-feeding a new take.

"Often when I see reboots, I'm like, 'Why? We didn't really like it before.' Or conversely, if it's something like Frasier or Seinfeld, where it was great the first time around, why touch it?" Ali said.

There are other ways to celebrate a classic without potentially tarnishing a TV legacy.

In the case of Friends, the high-profile 2021 reunion special was more than enough to "scratch that itch," Lowry said. During the special, which streamed on then-named HBO Max, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer reflected on the seminal comedy and shared behind-the-scenes secrets.

That could be the route Seinfeld takes — if that was, in fact, what the comedian had in mind when he hinted at revisiting the series.

"In the case of Seinfeld, I could see them doing a special or doing some sort of reunion where [the cast] get together and talk about it," Lowry said. "I would be stunned given where they all are in their careers if the Seinfeld cast wanted to do anything as time-consuming as a revival."