A Faster, Better, Stronger 'Bionic Woman'?

A few years ago, I wrote a cover story for Premiere Magazine about the WB movie remake of the Dukes of Hazzard (I still cringe when I think about it). At the time, die-hard fans of the old show were going crazy in the chatrooms, expressing their outrage over a blonde Daisy Duke.

Well, it seems that NBC's new Bionic Woman, one of the most compelling shows announced at upfronts last week, is facing the same sort of challenges with its "reimagining" of the original series, which ran on ABC and NBC from 1976-78. The LA Times lists some of the new show's details that have certain old-school fans frothing at the mouth. In addition to her super-sensitive synthetic ear, Jaime (or Jamie, as NBC now spells it), played by 23-year-old British actress Michelle Ryan, also has a telescopic eye with zoom function, much like Steve Austin did in The Six Million Dollar Man. And that's just the beginning, according to the Times:

Even the circumstances under which Jamie (now played by 23-year-old British actress Michelle Ryan) acquires her new body parts have darkened. Involved in a horrific car crash (it was a sky-diving accident in the original), she becomes an unwitting participant in a many-layered espionage caper involving her medical-genius boyfriend. Her nemeses this time are not the "fembots" of the old series but a shadowy criminal network led by another cyborg, the lethally lovelorn Sarah Covus (Katee Sackhoff, another "Galactica" veteran). The producers have also given Jamie a hearing-impaired teenage sister (Mae Whitman), whose safety seems destined to be imperiled somehow by the heroine's new identity.

But perhaps the biggest change will be the overall tone, which plays as neo-noirish and favors post 9/11 paranoia over '70s optimism (think of a more 24 style vibe). Says the original show's creator Kenneth Johnson (who isn't involved in the new project): "I'm sorry to hear that they went in that other direction."