‘Frankenstein’ TV Show, With Crime Solving Frankenstein, Is Alive – Alive! – At CBS
Criminals beware: Detective Frankenstein is on the case! CBS has ordered aFrankensteinTV series in which a cop is brought back from the dead by none other than Dr. Victor Frankenstein. So it’s basically likeRoboCop, which asjs the question: why didn’t they call thisFrankenCop? We may never know.Jason Tracey, a writer onBurn NoticeandElementary, is behind the show.
Stop, or my Frankenstein will shoot! That’s something you may or may not hear on the new CBS showFrankenstein, based very, very,veryloosely on Mary Shelley’s classic tale of terror. In the series, a San Francisco detective “is mysteriously brought back to life after being killed in the line of duty. But as he resumes his old life and he and his wife realize he isn’t the same person he used to be, they zero in on the strange man behind his resurrection – Dr. Victor Frankenstein.”
Seriously: that is thesamepremise asRoboCop, minus the Victor Frankenstein part. Is that all it takes to make a TV show? If so, CBS, I have an idea for you. Here goes: there’s a homicide cop, and one day he gets bit on the neck by a bat, and dies. Then he comesbackfrom the dead, and solves crime. But healsohas vampire powers, because that bat who bit him wasactuallyCount Dracula. Please send a check my way.
Believe it or not, this isn’t the first “Frankenstein solves mysteries” show (and before you yell at me, yes, I know Frankenstein is technically the doctor’s name). In 2004, a TV pilot movie calledFrankenstein, based on books by Dean Koontz, involved a cop (Parker Posey!) teaming with Frankenstein’s monster to solve crimes. The idea was to turn this into a TV series, but it never came to pass.
There was also a 2016 series first calledFrankenstein, then retitledThe Frankenstein Codethen eventually titledSecond Chance. In that series, a corrupt old cop dies, only to be brought back to life in a younger body. It lasted one season.
Will this newFrankensteinTV show fare better than its predecessors? It’s too early to tell. My advice is to lean into this premise and go as silly as possible. Give the resurrected cop the iconic flat head and bolts, and have him stumble around in big, clunky boots speaking in monosyllables. And maybe have some spooky guest stars every week. The Wolfman can show up in one episode, the Creature From the Black Lagoon in the next. That’s a show I’d watch.
