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‘Nash Bridges’ revival in the works

TV movie might serve as pilot for relaunch of series

By Chuck Barney, The Mercury News
Published: April 12, 2021, 6:00am

When will TV’s bewildering infatuation with reboots and revivals ever end? Apparently, not any time soon.

Now news comes that “Nash Bridges,” Don Johnson’s Bay Area-based cop show, will be exhumed from the vast TV graveyard.

This has caught us totally by surprise. We had no idea that the world was crying out for more “Nash.” But some programming executive in some high-rise office somewhere must think we desperately crave it.

Appearing Wednesday on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Johnson confirmed that he’s in “heavy prep” on the revival. He said it will “find Nash some years later. And Cheech (Marin) is going to come back and join me and Jeff Perry. We’ve got a pretty exciting show that we’re prepping in San Francisco right now.”

Production is set to begin in May.

But inquiring minds want to know: Will Nash’s gaudy yellow 1971 Plymouth Barracuda convertible ride again?

According to reports, the “Nash Bridges” reboot will air as a two-hour movie, possibly on the USA Network. But producers are hopeful it’ll serve as a back-door pilot for a full series relaunch.

The original “Nash Bridges” was created by Carlton Cuse (“Lost”) and ran for 122 episodes over six seasons on CBS. It left the air way back in 2001.

The series was the rare TV show to be filmed entirely in the Bay Area, with sound stages on Treasure Island. (Most Bay Area-set shows are actually shot in Los Angeles or Vancouver.) Johnson’s Bridges was a laid-back, wise-cracking inspector (and later captain) with the San Francisco Police Department’s Special Investigations Unit, and Marin played his partner. Other cast members over the show’s run included James Gammon, Jaime P. Gomez , Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, Annette O’Toole and Yasmine Bleeth.

More “Nash Bridges” will apparently mean a bigger workload for Johnson. The veteran actor is currently a series regular on the NBC sitcom “Kenan.”

Reboots, rehashes and spinoffs are all the rage these days, especially on broadcast television, where original ideas are an endangered species. CBS, which already has a reboot of “Magnum P.I.” on the air and just announced it was canceling “MacGyver” after five seasons, has ordered “CSI: Vegas,” a reboot of the original “CSI” series. Meanwhile, a “Criminal Minds” reboot is coming to the streaming platform Paramount+ and a “Punky Brewster” revival is available to stream on Peacock.

We could go on, but you get the idea.

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