Pitch your dark, gritty reboot

ok scratch that uhh...

umm....

Perfect Strangers but Balki isn't really Balki, he's a random, non-Meepos guy who murdered the real Balki so he can get closer to Cousin Larry and steal his identity and access the secret Appleton fortune, that even Larry knows not about.

50% of the show is footage from Step by Step

she was programmed to reward funny things and punish the unhumorous. by the end of the series, she had simply no choice

Growing Pains, featuring a grown-up Leo Dicaprio, and the entire series is Leo calling Mike Seaver and saying blasphemous things, until Kirk breaks the fourth wall and flips out and screams about how his Christmas movie was actually Citizen Kane.

oh, wait, dark gritty? hmm....uh - Boner is a hard-boiled detective and he spends the whole series solving the murder of a John Doe and the dead person turns out to be...him.

Antiques Roadshow, only it’s Friday the 13th: The Series

X-Files but now they follow QAnon

The Great British Bake-Off, where one contestant is killing the losing baker each week and incorporating their remains into their weekly showstopper challenge unbeknownst to the other contestants or the judges, but the production staff knows and is helping with the murders

Hereditary but gritty is in it

― Yelp for gyros (wins), Thursday, February 4, 2021 12:48 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Dark: the German Netflix series that's like an amalgamation of Twin Peaks, Back to the Future, and X-Files but gritty is in it

DJP’s contributions to this thread are killing me

SNL but they let the hosts freely spout anti-semitic tropes.

Arthur, a true crime miniseries where the adult animals put their heads together to solve the disappearance of Francine. Arthur is voiced by Richard Kind, Francine is found dismembered in a ritual killing, Binky is revealed in the penultimate episode to have been the cult-leader culprit. The "heart" of the series however revolves around the changing relationship between Arthur and his cop sister DW, who is attempting to assist in the investigation while covering up evidence of her own corruption and cartel ties.

ER, but each episode is from a new patient's pov as they show up to the ER, wait, then die.

Each episode ends with Clooney, drenched in blood, staring at the camera, intoning "We lost another one."

Scooby Doo, where Scooby isn't a dog, but a man seen together to look like one. Which is why he talks the way he does

Night Court: SVU

Which 1980s rapper is available to play the prosecutor

The Jetsons, in which George and family live in a cyberpunk dystopia, an environmentally degraded Earth inhabited by impoverished masses toiling for a ruling global elite that includes the Spacely family. The technology in the Jetson home is either surveillance equipment installed by the government or black-market, usually dangerous tech that Judy and Elroy have managed to scrounge from the vast waste dumps surrounding the now ironically-named Orbit City.

Xpost Kool Keith

Donkey Kong Country as a FromSoft/Soulslike open world

You know how on Scooby Doo, they always run away from the monster even if the monster turns out to be fake every single time? A 'year one' Scooby Doo prequel would be good. From the classic characters, it starts with just Shaggy and Scoob, along with maybe four or five others, who obviously won't make it to the end as the monsters actually catch them and show what happens when they do. Some monsters are real, but not all. Velma, Daphne and Freddie should eventually be introduced along with some friends or relatives who also get killed, so they are also properly traumatized and have good reason to be afraid in all the other series.

An A-Team reboot wherein people actually hit their targets in shootouts & with self-built tanks.

There's a Smurf story wherein Papa Smurf wants to organize the dance of the 100 Smurfs and is one Smurf short. It's solved in the story by Vanity Smurf accidentally cloning himself when his mirror is struck by lightning. But this story leads me to wonder if and how the Smurfs normally keep their population to exactly one hundred. These details need to be explored!

there is already a scooby doo film which is them becoming the scooby gang. not sure about all the deaths though.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1258157/?ref_=ttls_li_tt

Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins (2009)

thankful it wasn't called Rise of the Scoobs or some shit like that

I'm pretty sure that dark, gritty comic book versions exist

There’s also real-life, in-continuity Smurf book Le Schtroumpfissime/King Smurf, where Brainy becomes a fascist dictator when Papa Smurf goes on holiday, and Jokey Smurf leads an insurgent bombing campaign

Then iirc Jokey Smurf gets sentenced to death

wow

The latest Scooby Doo series with Mindy Kaling as the eponymous "Velma" is a prequel where the characters are not yet a gang, popular girls at the school are graphically lobotmized, Velma suffers from anxiety attacks which manifest as insane visions, and Scooby isn't even in it. Neither is the Mystery Machine. It's not as bad as it sounds.

There’s also real-life, in-continuity Smurf book Le Schtroumpfissime/King Smurf, where Brainy becomes a fascist dictator when Papa Smurf goes on holiday, and Jokey Smurf leads an insurgent bombing campaign

You are describing the gritty reboot version of it, but you're close. Brainy becomes King Smurf in the cartoon, not in the book (which is called 'De Smurfführer' in Dutch!). Papa Smurf needs to go away to find a special herb for his experiments. The other Smurfs get into arguments and decide that they need someone in charge, however since everybody wants to be the one in charge they go for elections. One Smurf discovers that he can get his fellow Smurfs on his side by making them promises that greatly appeal to them - promises which he may not even intend to uphold. Brainy expects to be elected but only gets one accidental vote besides his own. Once elected, the King goes on a power trip, Hefty wants to beat him up but the King appoints him leader of the guard which facilitates his dictatorship. Jokey pulls his typical exploding package prank on the King and gets thrown in jail. A rebellion is formed and frees Jokey, Brainy is jailed instead and expects to be similarly rescued but nobody cares. The rebels retreat to the forest. Raids from the King fails. The King reinforces the village and the rebels attack it in an all-out civil war. Then Papa returns, everyone's ashamed, the King picks up a broom to start cleaning up the mess but the others tell him that they like him and the fault is not his, but everybody's, and everything's well again.

I repeatedly read all of the Peyo Smurf books to my daughter a couple of years ago so I'm well-versed. The above story is a very good one, but does seem to take forever. I prefer the one wherein they have a civil war because the north and south sides of the village have different takes on compound nouns, ie 'Corksmurf' versus 'Smurfscrew'.
The notorious first story, 'the Black Smurfs', features Smurfs getting stung by a certain mosquito and turning into zombie-like creatures. It's not bad but the chosen colour makes it somewhat problematic. For the cartoon version they understandably went with 'the Purple Smurfs'.
Far more problematic is the Smurfette story, which has Gargamel create Smurfette by infusing blue clay with a shitload of annoying personality features, and this is then the only female character. Ah, here it is: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/image/p/peyo/peyo_smurfin.jpg

Wow.. who hurt you bud?

Lol, thanks for correcting my precis. It's such a good book, and it really works on both levels -- as a colorful adventure for a six-year-old who likes Smurfs, and as a dark parable for adults (or teenagers who've read their first Orwell)

Brainy's misapprehension that he's going to be rescued by a grateful public is totally classic

Holy for shit, I forgot there was an A Team movie with Liam Neeson. Doubt it was dark and gritty, but I bet it was grim.

I quite liked that A-Team movie. It has an amazing over-the-top scene where they crash land a tank from a plane into a lake.
Parts of it work less well. There is a strong focus on the development of Faceman from an impulsive screwup to a controlled reliance and that means the ultimately, the main plan comes from him and not from Hannibal - who should really be the devious mastermind. Also, there's a whole thing about B.A. turning non-violent and then having a moment where he 'comes back' from that mindset in a very brutal manner. But overall, I would have liked to see more of this incarnation of the team.

But this story leads me to wonder if and how the Smurfs normally keep their population to exactly one hundred.

Soylent Blue

When Jay Leno was set on fire by one of his cars, I immediately thought of a Cars reboot set in a vintage car collection where the cars - tired, corroded with rust, and riddled with metal fatigue - see their owner as a demonic zombie master who totally against their wishes for eternal sleep, keeps them alive and running. Eventually, they turn on him.

a man, meek and down on his luck, is at the end of his rope. as he hitchhikes at one last ditch effort to start over again, he keels over in pain as he hears a ringing in his ear. it gives way to a piercing voice that speaks only one word at a time. "Hope". "Peace". "Salvation".

Soon, coordinates are beamed to his phone, and he goes on a long, arduous mission to meet the source of the voice in his head. he faces death many times, and by the end of the movie he reaches his destination. he finds a glowing light and as he draws near he falls to his knees upon what he sees:

Hologram George Burns. the film goes to black and the film's title appears for the first and only time

"Oh, God! Book One"