Of all the shows clamoring for a reboot, Ally McBeal might not be the first one to come to mind. But ready your dancing (baby) shoes, because an Ally McBeal revival is what you’re going to get.
TV Line reports that an Ally McBeal limited series revival is in the early stages of development, with leading lady Calista Flockhart being eyed to reprise the title role of the lawyer with the infamously short miniskirts. No word on whether the dancing baby will return as well.
Original series creator David E. Kelly, who has been keeping busy on TV in the years since Ally McBeal went off the air in 2002 with award-winning dramas like Big Little Lies, is set to be involved as executive producer. However a “female auteur would likely take the showrunner reins,” TV Line notes.
Kelly himself has said over the years that he is inclined toward the idea of a female showrunner taking over Ally McBeal. “I’d be open to the idea of Ally McBeal being done again, but I don’t think it should be done by me. If it were going to be done, it really should be done by a woman,” he told The Hollywood Reporter back in 2018. “If it’s going to be new, it should be new and different. And I did it: 100 hours.”
Ally McBeal premiered on Fox in 1997, becoming an instant pop culture sensation — both for its quirky spin on the legal drama and for pushing sexual boundaries (the latter of which got the series accused of killing feminism). But now it’s a series that was considered ahead of its time, though at its time it was recognized well enough, winning an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy series and turning Flockhart into a household name.
Over its five seasons, Ally McBeal‘s ensemble featured a great many talents, including Courtney Thorne-Smith, Greg Germann, Lisa Nicole Carson, Jane Krakowski, Peter MacNicol and Gil Bellows, with Portia de Rossi and Lucy Liu joining the cast in Season 2. It also was notably the start of Robert Downey Jr.’s career comeback (or maybe the end of his first comeback?) before he would transition from washed-up Hollywood star to Iron Man. Perhaps the Avengers: Endgame star could even afford to stop in for a cameo.
As of now, the Ally McBeal revival does not have a network or streamer attached, though TV Line notes that Hulu is the logical destination, as the original Ally McBeal was made under 20th Television, now under Disney’s corporate umbrella. All five seasons of Ally McBeal are also now streaming on Hulu.
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