I agree, do something original and stop with the attempts to recreate decades past.
I watched the pilot for the 12 Monkeys series the other night. It was really just an abbreviated version of the movie with a couple of changes and not very good. The pilot would have been better referring to the movie and moving forward with the story.
An original basic plot isn’t so hard. Plenty of sci fi Freepers could come up with something good if we worked on it.
I think the reason they are recycling old material is because they are reaching out to the old audiences of twenty years ago; the demographic disaster/low birthrate of the middle and upper classes has led marketers to appeal to the previously “young” audience to sell things (both the shows/ movies themselves and the products in commercials). I’m surprised at how many entertainment personalities of years past are now appearing in commercials, and how many movies/TV shows are re-treads of old ones.
To reach truly young audiences today, you would be targeting the welfare broods (who don’t have much to spend) or producing in Spanish, Hindi, or Chinese. There seems to be a recognition that the politically correct shows/movies aren’t doing well because there is nobody to watch them; the targeted generation of younger Americans for such PC fluff simply hasn’t been born.