Recycled In Space / Live-Action TV

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• At least four Brazilian soap operas did this. O Cravo e a Rosa was Taming Of The Shrew IN 1920s SÃO PAULO! (the main characters were even still Catarina, Bianca and Julião Petruchio.) Mandala was Oedipus the King IN 1987 RIO! (the main characters retained their Greek names: Jocasta, Edipo, Laio and Creonte)^note The Parental Incest was toned down to just a kiss by the censorship. Some called it a hypocritical move since the violence wasn't censored: a character was killed by serveral shots on-screen. And Pygmalion - best known by some as My Fair Lady - earned both the indicatively titled Pigmalião 70 (Pygmalion WITH A MAN IN 1970 RIO DE JANEIRO!) and the 2016 one Totalmente Demais (Pygmalion WITH MODELS IN 2016 RIO! And not only the makeover girl was still named Eliza, but the series was described by its writers as Pygmalion meets Top Model).

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• The 100 is Lord of the Flies IN THE EARTH!
• Abbott Elementary is The Office IN AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!
• All That is Saturday Night Live for kids.
• Andor is Les Misérables IN SPACE!
• Andromeda is Gene Roddenberry's failed pilot Genesis II IN SPACE!
• Baby Einstein
  • Baby Bach is Baby Mozart WITH BACH MUSIC!
    • Baby Beethoven is these WITH BEETHOVEN MUSIC!
  • Baby Van Gogh is Baby Shakespeare WITH COLORS!
  • Baby Noah is Baby Dolittle: World Animals WITH NOAH'S ARK!
  • Discovering Shapes is Baby Newton WITH A RHINO!
  • Baby's First Sounds is Language Nursery WITH FOOTAGE FROM PREVIOUS VIDEOS!
  • The discovery kit Neptune's Oceans is the Baby Dolittle videos WITH SEA AND ARTIC ANIMALS!
• Baby Genius is Baby Einstein WITH ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMALS and NURSERY RHYMES!
• Babylon 5: Thirdspace was The Call of Cthulhu IN SPACE!
  • River of Souls was Ghostbusters IN SPACE!
  • A joke among the fandom was to describe B5 (favorably) as The Lord of the Rings IN SPACE! (Even though the stories and characters are nothing alike), with the spin-off Crusade ending up as a Dungeons & Dragons campaign IN SPACE! (See, they had a wizard, a thief, a paladin...)
  • A lot of what goes on within the Centauri court is I, Claudius IN SPACE!
• Many episodes of Battlestar Galactica (1978) are lifted from classic movies;
  • "The Gun on Ice Planet Zero" = The Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra. Both movies were based on books by Alistair MacLean.
  • "The Magnificent Warriors" = The Magnificent Seven, which itself was a western version of Seven Samurai.
  • "The Lost Warrior" = Shane
  • "Fire in Space" = The Towering Inferno
  • "Murder on the Rising Star" = Murder on the Orient Express
  • Both the old and new series are heavily inspired by series creator Glen Larson's Mormon faith, making it effectively The Book of Mormon IN SPACE!
    • Hmm...the twelve tribes colonies, originated from Eden Kobol, was forced to move from their homeland to find a promised land Earth that only was known from legend, all due to the actions of a certain man, who after receiving visions and power from a higher being, eventually become the founder and leader of Judaism Christianity a monothestic religion and preach about grace, and after wandering around the desert space for forty four years, manage to arrive on a lush green place planet that is eventually OUR Earth, all according to the plan of the higher being. Hmm, sounds like a familiar book...
  • The re-imagined series gave us the episode "The Captain's Hand" = Crimson Tide IN SPACE!
  • The prequel Caprica is The Godfather IN SPACE!
• Barney & Friends is Wee Sing WITH DINOSAURS!
• With its Star Wars-inspired motif, Battlestars is almost literally The Hollywood Squares IN SPACE!
• Baywatch Nights? Baywatch...WITH DETECTIVES! And when that didn't work out, WITH THE PARANORMAL! And also WITH SCI-FI!
• Bear in the Big Blue House is Barney & Friends IN A HOUSE AND MORE DOWN TO EARTH! Oh, and WITH MUPPETS!
• Bella and the Bulldogs is essentially Disney Channel's The Jersey AS A NICKELODEON SITCOM! AND WITHOUT ANY FANTASY ELEMENTS!
• Between the Lions is The Electric Company WITH PUPPETS!
  • Alternatively, Readalong IN AMERICA!
• Blake's 7 was The Dirty Dozen mixed with Robin Hood IN SPACE! In a specific episode example, the Space Rats, the antagonists in the episode "Hyperdrive", were criminal outlaw bikers IN SPACE!
• The Bold Type is Psych WITH FASHION MODELS!
• Boohbah is Teletubbies WITH BALL-LIKE CREATURES!
• The Book Place is Between the Lions IN AUSTRALIA!
• The Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode "Space Vampire" is Dracula...In Space, complete with a wrecked ship with a ship's log that documents the deaths of the crew and a passenger named William Helsing from "New London"
• The Brady Bunch Variety Hour is The Muppet Show WITH THE BRADYS!
• The Brittas Empire is Fawlty Towers IN A LEISURE CENTRE!
  • "The Magic Hour" was Ladyhawke IN CALIFORNIA! WITH GOOD WITCHES!
  • The episode "Dead Man Dating" was Ghost (1990) IN SAN FRANCISCO, WITH WITCHES AND DEMONS!
• Charmed (2018) is basically the original Charmed AS A Denser and Wackier AFFECTIONATE PARODY!
• The Chica Show is Caillou IN A COSTUME SHOP and MORE DOWN TO EARTH!. Oh, and is BOTH LIVE-ACTION AND ANIMATED!
• China Beach is M*A*S*H IN THE VIETNAM WAR WITH A FOCUS ON THE NURSES!
• Crash & Bernstein is The Loud House IN LIVE ACTION, WITH A PUPPET!
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is Sex and the City AS A MUSICAL SATIRE!
• CSI Season 9 Episode 20. CSI: IN SPACE!
• The Dateline segment To Catch a Con Man is To Catch a Predator WITH CHRIS HANSEN TELLING CON MEN TO TAKE A SEAT OVER THERE INSTEAD OF ONLINE PREDATORS!
• Parodied on The Daily Show during a short in which Jon Stewart, Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert are TV producers trying to come up with a new reality show. At one point, Colbert complains that "Every pitch [Stewart] makes is just one of mine with the words IN SPACE added to the end."
• Defying Gravity is Grey's Anatomy IN SPACE!
• Denkō Chōjin Gridman is Ultraman and The Transformers together IN CYBERSPACE!
• Dino Dana is Dino Dan AS A GIRL!
• Dinosaurs is The Simpsons WITH DINOSAURS!
• Half of all Doctor Who episodes ever are "Hammer Horror/Classic Literature/Contemporary Movie/Greek Mythology etc., WITH ALIENS!" Doctor Who author Ben Aaronovitch once said that "Talent borrows, genius steals, and Doctor Who authors get it off the back of a lorry, no questions asked." ( He was talking specifically about his novel, The Also People, which was The Culture! IN DOCTOR WHO!)
  • The Third Doctor story "The Dæmons" is Quatermass and the Pit IN WILTSHIRE INSTEAD OF KNIGHTSBRIDGE!
    • And the Fourth Doctor story "The Seeds of Doom" is The Quatermass Experiment IN DORSET! — when it's not being Who Goes There? or "The Man-Eater of Surrey Green".
  • The Fourth Doctor story "The Androids of Tara" is The Prisoner of Zenda IN SPACE!
  • The penultimate Ninth Doctor story, "Bad Wolf", rather shamelessly had Big Brother, What Not to Wear, and The Weakest Link IN SPACE! No, not lawyer-friendly knock-offs of them, but the actual shows, transplanted into the distant future, as part of what turns out to be a typically horrifying Doctor Who plot. As weird as it sounds, it works really well.
  • "Smith and Jones" has the Doctor say this while Obfuscating Stupidity:
    "Have you seen?! There are these things, these great big space rhino things, I mean, rhinos from space, and we're on the Moon! Big space rhinos, with guns! ON THE MOON!"
  • "Voyage of the Damned" is The Poseidon Adventure IN SPACE! It's even lampshaded, since the space ship is appropriately named the Titanic.
  • It seems to be a recurring theme for the specials, 2010 had "A Christmas Carol" which was, of course, A Christmas Carol IN SPACE! ...WITH A FLYING SHARK!
  • The Tenth Doctor & Donna story "The Unicorn and the Wasp" is an Agatha Christie mystery WITH AGATHA CHRISTIE! AND ALIENS!
    • "Mummy on the Orient Express" is Murder on the Orient Express meets The Mummy IN SPACE!
  • "The Lodger" is lampshaded as Doctor Who ON EARTH!
  • "The Big Bang": The Doctor once took Amy to "Space Florida", and at the end receives a phone call about an incident onboard the Orient Express IN SPACE!
  • In the Big Finish Eighth Doctor story Max Warp, the eponymous Show Within a Show is Top Gear IN SPACE!
    • "Chimes of Midnight" is House of Leaves AS A MURDER MYSTERY FARCE!
• The Dooley And Pals Show is The Huggabug Club WITH AN ALIEN AND A ROBOT!
• The Duck Factory featured a young Jim Carrey tasked with rebooting a stale cartoon show. After finding he'd just proposed killing off the producer's favorite character, he notes the producer's office decor and saves the day by adding, "did I mention this all happens IN SPACE?"
• Dumbo's Circus is Welcome to Pooh Corner IN A CIRCUS!
• Dusty's Trail was Gilligan's Island IN THE OLD WEST!
• Earth: Final Conflict has the 4th season episode "Phantom Companion" which is basically the The Phantom of the Opera set on the Taelon mothership, or to put it simply, IN SPACE!
• The Expanse isn't precisely Don Quixote IN SPACE! but it borrows enough thematic elements to feel that way.
  • However, quite a bit of the plot-line concerning Detective Miller's search for Julie Mao can be summarized as Laura IN SPACE!
• Family Matters went on for nine seasons before some bright crayon decided Urkel would be even better IN SPACE! Urkel returned. The show did not. Cracked.com used this as an example of TV shows that went beyond Jumping the Shark and just completely lost their shit.
• Far Out Space Nuts is a Saturday morning Gilligan's Island IN SPACE! Complete with Bob Denver playing Gilligan's Expy. "I said LUNCH, not LAUNCH!"
• Farscape, with varying degrees of delight, made several such episodes. Possibly the most memorable is the one where, locked inside his own mind, Crichton turns his existence into a Looney Tunes cartoon, with a lot of reference to the Wile E. Coyote/Roadrunner cartoons.
  • For that matter, the entire premise of the show is really just Alice in Wonderland... in SPACE. It has also been compared to Blake's 7 WITH A BUDGET.
• Fate: The Winx Saga is Doctor Strange AS A WINX CLUB SHOW IN LIVE-ACTION!
• The Fimbles is Teletubbies ON THE MOON and THE CHARACTERS SPEAK ENGLISH!
  • Alternatively, The Hoobs BUT BIGGER!
• Firefly's premise is the American Civil War...IN SPACE!
• Fraggle Rock is Mister Rogers' Neighborhood JIM HENSON STYLE, WITH MORE EMPHASIS ON THE SHOW'S IMAGINARY WORLD!
• The Fresh Beat Band is The Wiggles BUT HIP and WITH BETTER HAIR AND OUTFITS!
• Gang Related is The Departed (which is Infernal Affairs IN BOSTON, WITH IRISH GANGSTERS) IN LOS ANGELES, WITH LATINOS.
• Giggle And Hoot is The Good Night Show IN AUSTRALIA!
• Glee is High School Musical AS A DRAMEDY!
• The Good Night Show is The Big Comfy Couch AT NIGHT and IN AMERICA!. Oh, and HAS A STAR-SHAPED PILLOW PUPPET!
• Grimm is Twin Peaks WITH FAIRY TALES!
• Groundling Marsh is Fraggle Rock WITH ENVIRONMENTAL MESSAGES!
• Y Gwyll/Hinterland is Nordic Noir IN WALES! AND IN WELSH (AND ENGLISH)!
• Hart of Dixie is Grey's Anatomy IN THE DEEP SOUTH!
• Hawkeye (2021) is Arrow IN THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE!
• Hip Hop Harry is Barney & Friends WITH RAP MUSIC!
• The premise for the cancelled pilot Hot Date would've been The Bachelor WITH PORN STARS!
• High School Musical: The Musical: The Series is Glee AIMED AT A SLIGHTLY YOUNGER AUDIENCE!
• Hola Sproutitos is Shining Time Station IN BOTH ENGLISH AND SPANISH!
• Homeboys in Outer Space was, well...Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• The Huggabug Club is Wee Sing WITH BUGS!
• Imagination Movers is The Wiggles AS AMERICANS AND IN A WAREHOUSE!
• In the Night Garden... is Teletubbies BEFORE BED!
• Jack's Big Music Show is Yo Gabba Gabba! WITH PUPPETS!
• Jessie is The Nanny WITH A YOUNGER PROTAGONIST AND A MULTI-ETHNIC CAST!
• Johnny and the Sprites is Fraggle Rock FOR PRESCHOOLERS!
• Just Roll With It is The Play That Goes Wrong AS A CHILDREN'S GAME SHOW!
• Revenge is The Count of Monte Cristo IN THE HAMPTONS WITH A FEMALE VERSION OF EDMOND DANTÈS!
• Spin the Wheel is The Wall WITH A WHEEL!
• Stranger Things is Gravity Falls IN LIVE ACTION AND FOR A MORE MATURE AUDIENCE!