Barba-Hell-No: Seven Movies That Should Be TV Shows Before Barbarella

A Barbarella TV show? Really? Make one of these instead.

By David Wharton | Updated 5 months ago

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
The closing credits of the cult classic Buckaroo Banzai promised that Buckaroo and the Honk Kong Kavaliers would return in Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League, and fans have been waiting ever since for the follow-up that never came. Fox even tried to develop a show based on the movie, called Buckaroo Banzai: Ancient Secrets and New Mysteries, back in the late ’90s, but alas it never came together. But with the television landscape having opened up and pretty much every cable network trying to develop original content, surely there’s a home out there for the further adventures of a daring adventurer/physicist/neurosurgeon/test pilot/rock musician.

Many of the original cast have gone on to acting success and all have, well, aged 30 years, so a series starring the likes of Peter Weller, Clancy Brown, and Jeff Goldblum is probably right out. But why not jump on the Hollywood bandwagon and make the series a prequel? While that’s often a dirty word, this would allow us to see the earlier adventures of Buckaroo and the HKK’s — of which I’m sure there were many — and Weller and the rest could still remain the definitive older versions of the characters. With the right writers and cast, Buckaroo’s continuing adventures through the odd, forgotten corners of the world could fit right in with shows like Eureka or Warehouse 13.