Arrested Development is back but shouldn't we let cancelled shows die?

What's behind the clamour for more Veronica Mars and Entourage? Could it be their newly unemployed makers suddenly having time to tweet?
Arrested Development: time will tell whether this new miniseries/movie idea floats Photograph: 20th Century Fox 20th Century Fox/ 20th Century Fox

Soon after Arrested Development went off the air in 2006, the show's creator, Mitch Hurwitz, announced tentative plans to make a movie following the exploits of the Bluth family. Over the next five years, Hurwitz would remain optimistic about the progress of the feature but reticent too. Many believed it would never happen, but then earlier this month Hurwitz made public his intentions not only to release the film in 2013 but to produce a new miniseries which would lead up to it. Now that it looms on the horizon, though, the question has to be asked: do we really need an Arrested Development movie?

Don't get me wrong: the sheer tonnage of gags, its rich seam of characterisation, and ability to flip from the absurd and profane to the wistful made it a privilege to be part of what was never going to be more than a select, discerning audience for the show. But is there really a further chapter of the Bluth saga that Hurwitz is desperate to write? Or were the critical lambastings handed out to his barely watched post-Arrested comedies – the animated Sit Down Shut Up and the sitcom Running Wilde – the real impetus to return? Obviously, Hurwitz is a monster talent and it would be foolish to discount the chances of him making magic, but he's far from the only creative type convinced there's still an audience for a cancelled show.

Take the lovely, talented Kristen Bell for example. She can't let an interview or even a tweet pass by without trying to drum up fan support for a big-screen continuation of her high-school PI show Veronica Mars. That show's creator, a genuine, if luckless, TV genius named Rob Thomas, is campaigning hard to turn another of his creations, the semi-improvised comedy Party Down, into a presumably Christopher Guest-like ensemble movie. Kristin: Veronica Mars had a brilliant first season. It was like a gum-chewing, wisecracking film noir that followed a single murder case over twenty-two episodes. By season three, Veronica was out of high school and investigating campus crimes, ie: everything that made her special was long gone. Rob: Party Down was a terrific, heartfelt show that encompassed a little of the spirit of the original Office. Its viewing figures barely reached fifty thousand. There is no audience for either of these movies. Rob: write another show about a teenage detective and keep her in high school as long as humanly possible. Kristin: play her wizened mentor. Thank you.

Then there's the long-gestating 24 movie. I feel like I've already seen the best possible version of it; it was called Taken and starred Liam Neeson. Whether you watched it episode by episode or consumed entire seasons in marathon sittings, the main pleasure of 24 was getting lost in endless twists and insanely high stakes. The smartest route for a film to take would be to put one of Jack Bauer's remaining loved ones in jeopardy and then unleash an orgy of violence and sleeper holds. The least smart route would be to have Jack save the world from another terrorist cell. Which is what you suspect might happen.

Serenity embodied the problem with retooling TV shows that weren't hits: they have to devote a hefty chunk of screentime to re-introducing their characters and premises

Veronica Mars
Kristen Bell waits patiently for Veronica Mars to "do a Firefly"

What advice does one give to mega-successful actor-producer- director Peter Berg? He directed Friday Night Lights, a movie about the effect of high school football on a small Texan town, and then oversaw its adaptation into a TV series so beloved that NBC let it survive though five beautiful seasons. And what a satisfying elegiac ending, with the most believable and enviable married couple on television, Coach Eric Taylor and his combative but devoted guidance teacher wife Tami finally leaving Dillon, Texas for a new life in Philadelphia. I don't blame Berg for not wanting to let those characters go. That's why he's making a new Friday Night Lights movie. Maybe it'll be heart-rending and ridiculously affecting. Maybe it won't have a plot that contrives a reason for the Taylors to leave Philadelphia and come back to small-town Texas. Maybe.

As much as these potential small-to-big screen translations reek of potential disaster, the journey from living room to multiplex has been made successfully; most recently by The Inbetweeners, most lucratively by Sex And The City, and most impressively by South Park. Mark Wahlberg will probably reap similar rewards with the Entourage movie he set in motion seconds after the end of the HBO show. Hurwitz, Bell and Berg aren't looking at those movies, however. They're looking at Serenity. This was a film derived from Joss Whedon's space western Firefly, whose treatment by the Fox Network remains one of the most egregious examples of corporate insensitivity in decades: they underpromoted it, they postponed it, they rescheduled it, they showed episodes out of order and then they cancelled it. Whedon's impassioned online following and the steady sales of the DVD box set meant, however, that a movie rose from its ashes. Die-hard Whedonites were thrilled by the power of their fandom but was anyone really bowled over by Serenity? Serenity embodied the problem with retooling TV shows that weren't massive hits: they have to devote a hefty chunk of screentime to re-introducing their characters and re-establishing their premises. (By the time the second X-Files movie showed up, Mulder and Scully had been off the pop culture map for so long, that no one cared.)

Producers aren't thinking about the film, though, they're thinking about the movement. If we were living in the dark days before social media and box sets, I'm not so sure we would see as many striving to extend the lives of their low-rated shows. But if you're one of the creative types responsible for, say, The Playboy Club (recently cancelled after three episodes) and you now have the time to spend your days and nights retweeting testimonials from followers demanding the immediate return of your brilliant show, wouldn't you be convinced your dead TV show deserved to live on as a movie?

It's impossible to fault Mitch Hurwitz for wanting to keep his most cherished creations alive. It's also hard not to wish he'd had the same reaction as David Simon to the idea of a movie of The Wire: "I have no interest in doing it just to do it."