Originally published on Facebook 21 October 2014.

Despite it being accepted as a given by everybody who ever mentions it, the CASABLANCA TV series starring David Soul was not some one-of-a-kind, historical icon of awfulness.

Really. It wasn’t. It wasn’t terrible at all. It just wasn’t special.

Nor was it the crazy stupid thing TV did that one time; in point of fact, it was the *second* time somebody attempted a CASABLANCA TV series, the first time being in the 1950s. I have an episode of that show, packaged as an extra on my DVD of the movie, and that was bad; so bad, in fact, that I cannot get more than a few minutes into it. (The moment where the camera pans past the mirror at Rick’s bar and captures itself, not fleetingly but in full glory, was too much for me.)

TV has had a bunch of such shows, attempting to render serially what the movies told in-and-out. Some of them were good, others weren’t. There was a show starring Harry Lime, from THE THIRD MAN, cast in a heroic light. Really. I can’t tell you anything about it except that I am dumbfounded by the very idea.

The David Soul CASABLANCA was handsomely mounted, well cast, well-meaning, and even — insofar as it could be — well-written. David Soul, remembered as terrible in it, did the best he could with the material. He really did. The embarrassment was seriously not his fault.

The real problem with the show was two-fold, and illustrates the key problem with writing prequels, sequels, and tie-ins to established classics.

First, as a prequel, it immediately trapped itself in amber, as far as character development was concerned. Its Rick, imprisoned in the era before Ilsa returned to his gin joint, had to be both the embittered cynic who never stuck his neck out for anybody and the protagonist who did just that on a weekly basis; he couldn’t advance, and as a result he experienced the same epiphany in the fourth episode that he did in the first. Had the show gone on for seven seasons, it would have been giggle-worthy to then append the Bogart movie, and watch everybody be so scandalized that Rick suddenly behaved like a man with ideals, when in fact he would have done just that on a weekly basis all the years before it.

Second, it had the hubris to tackle material so beloved, so iconic, that it would have needed to be ten times better than the original CASABLANCA just to be considered any more than a pimple on its ass. This is too high a bar for any TV series to leap. Indeed, it’s too high a bar for most movies to leap. See also the Disney film RETURN TO OZ, which is actually a terrific movie, and according to some lights, including Peter David and myself, in many ways a *better* movie than THE WIZARD OF OZ; people reacted with outrage that another Oz movie was even attempted and many of those who watched it were upset that it was not the same movie all over again. I saw one review that blasted it for not having any songs as good as “Over the Rainbow” — in fact, it had no songs at all — and that’s the problem right there: when a movie can be criticized and condemned for not having a song as good as one of the most beloved songs of the entire damn century, there are no conceivable circumstances where people will ever be willing to judge it on its own merits.

Ditto with Soul’s CASABLANCA. How could any episode, let alone every episode, live up to one of the most adored stories of our time? If it was just *terrific*, it would still fail. And it did not quite reach terrific.

Judged by itself, the David Soul CASABLANCA was a perfectly competent, mildly interesting, visually arresting TV series set in an interesting milieu, and starring some interesting characters; it was not the worst TV series on even at its time and is certainly not the all-time icon of awfulness it is described as in the frequent lists that celebrate TV’s low points. It is even brilliant compared to some shows that are raging hits today. Seriously: on a night when TWO BROKE GIRLS is the only thing on, I would watch Soul’s CASABLANCA again in a heartbeat, and even enjoy myself. You can even give the show props for trying to be about something. I’m not saying it’s ripe for revival. I’m saying that rhetoric painting it as “unbelievably awful” is colored by the need we have to remember it that way.

In a world where we have turned sequels to GONE WITH THE WIND and LES MISERABLES into bestsellers, and have made a TV series about Gotham City before Batman showed up, we need to get off its ass.

We can agree, though, that it was a truly terrible idea.

Tags: Batman, Casablanca, David Soul, Gone With The Wind, Gotham, Les Miserables, Movies, Peter David, remakes, Return to Oz, The Third Man, The Wizard Of Oz, Two Broke Girls | Category Commentary, Movies, Remake Chronicles, TV