TUESDAY NEWS DAY: A NEW ODD COUPLE?

Lately, NBC seems to have been traveling the remake route, with the latest being the quickly cancelled 'Ironside' and with a reboot of 'Murder, She Wrote' that was in the works until the pre-publicity turned against it.  (I thought it could have worked so long as they just retained the title and made it a whole new character.)  And in the last few years there was also the retread of 'Bionic Woman'.

CBS is getting into that game as well, with Matthew Perry bringing 'The Odd Couple' back as a sitcom.  

O'Bviously this will be found in some alternate TV dimension as Neil Simon's classic mismatched roomies are already firmly ensconced in the dimension of Earth Prime-Time, with Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison.  (Both of them were inducted together into the Television Crossover Hall Of Fame back in the year of duos, 2002.)

One can't say that there can be only one "Odd Couple", as Felix and Oscar reside in several fictional universes - in the theater world, they were first played by Walter Matthau and Art Carney; and in the Cineverse, Matthau reprised the role of Oscar while Jack Lemmon became Felix.  (And both of them returned to the roles many years later in another movie.)

The TV Universe has another incarnation of the pair in an alternate dimension - Ron Glass and Demond Wilson played Felix and Oscar in Black Toobworld (where Blair Underwood's Ironside is still fighting crime, despite being cancelled.)

But I think the public has Randall & Klugman too firmly entrenched in their minds as the Odd Couple and that may prove too difficult to overcome.

Matthew Perry is one of the show's producers and he'll be taking on the role of Oscar.  Thomas Lennon, of 'Reno 911!' and 'Sean Saves The World', has been cast as the new Felix.  (Thinking back to his role on 'Friends', I would have thought Felix would have been a better fit for Perry, but he probably wants to expand his range.  And the character he played in his last sitcom, 'Go On', was more lke Oscar than Felix.)

I wrote this post up for future use when the news story first broke.  That was before NBC canceled 'Sean Saves The World' after giving it a longer shelf life than it deserved.

At the time, this is how I originally ended this post:

I wish the production well and I will be curious to see who they finally cast as Felix.  (If 'Sean Saves The World' wasn't proving so inexplicably popular, either Sean Hayes or Thomas Lennon might have worked as the fussbudget photographer. (Portraits a specialty.)

So I called that one!

BCnU!