Having realised that it doesn’t really serve any purpose in 2018, MTV is getting into the nostalgia business. It recently revealed plans to revive some of its most-loved legacy properties. Daria is coming back, as is Aeon Flux, The Real World and Made. While this is good news – anything that breaks up the wall-to-wall monotony of endless Catfish episodes is frankly much-needed – it doesn’t seem like it goes as far as it should. In its day, MTV was an absolute wonderland of television, and there are so many other shows it could haul back in from the wilderness.
For a glorious stretch in the mid-1990s, Beavis and Butthead operated as a sort of MTV Mystery Science Theater 3000. Popular music videos of the day would play out, while a couple of sniggering delinquents sat back and ripped them apart. “These guys are pretty cool for a bunch of mimes,” they said about Kiss. They called Styx “Your mom hanging out in bars again”. Imagine Beavis and Butt-Head retooled to be awful to YouTubers. It would be the only thing I’d ever watch.
There were only ever 13 episodes of the blisteringly inventive Clone High – a cartoon about teenage clones of everyone from Lincoln to Gandhi – but the talent involved was impeccable. It was the first big runout for Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who filled both The Lego Movie and the 21 Jump Street franchise with jokes that were originally destined for Clone High. The pair often talk about trying to bring it back. Fingers crossed they succeed.
Obviously, nobody would ever produce a straight remake of The Osbournes in 2018, because it’d just about be the saddest television programme in all of history. But the series is so seminal – it essentially invented reality TV as we know it – that it deserves to be commemorated somehow. Remake it with George Osborne’s family?
Dear God, the writers this show had. As well as Stiller, the room included Brent Forrester (who went on to write on The Simpsons and The Office), David Cross and Bob Odenkirk (who went on to create Mr Show), Dino Stamatopoulos (who went on to write for everything you’ve ever liked) and Judd Apatow (who went on to become Judd Apatow). A reunion wouldn’t exactly appeal to the youth of today, but it would still be incredible.
Jackass hasn’t been on television for 16 years, and you shudder to think what sort of reception it’d get in these censorious times. A show about the simple pleasures of elaborately hurting yourself and others in the name of pure entertainment, it was very much a moment of its time. But perhaps MTV can make a show based on its nearest possible equivalent: an endless loop of lads partaking in the cinnamon challenge.
Again, not a great show to bring back as is, since its hosts were a now-notorious anti-vaxxer (Jenny McCarthy) and a man who has just been accused of sexual assault (Chris Hardwick) – claims which he denies – but leave them out of this and you’re left with what’s now, on reflection, a surprisingly wholesome dating show. A British version, for a time hosted by Richard Blackwood and Tess Daly, aired on Channel 5, but it was rubbish.
A wonderful television programme that needs to come back in one form or another. The premise was simple – you would give your car to Xzibit and he would remodel it so elaborately that you’d never be able to drive it again for fear of being mistaken for a satanic clown by terrified locals determined to run you out of town – but an enduring one. Bring it back.
A 30-minute compilation of shorts from independent animators Liquid Television was the walking definition of hit-and-miss. It could be indulgent and sloppy at times, but it was also the perfect incubator for shows such as Aeon Flux and Beavis and Butt-Head. If MTV handed over a cheap slot to promising new animators today, it’s almost guaranteed that we’d still be talking about some of the results 20 years from now.