As I’m watching this right now I thought I’d share some thoughts on the reasons why it didn’t work as a 21st Century franchise. The original series was brilliant. There’s no doubt about that, and actually the 2004 version had a lot of good points. It had a good cast (Lady Penelope and Parker were brilliant in fact), some great special effects and the story wasn’t too bad either.
But where they went wrong in my opinion, is in trying to move away from the central thrust of the story. They tried to make the children an integral part of the story instead of it just being about disasters and awesome machines. I think that if they’d stuck to the formula it would have had a much better chance.
It’s a shame really as I think it would have made a good franchise really, but it wasn’t to be.
I am Ashley Elsdon 