Suits revival begets inevitable White Collar revival
Matt Bomer, Tiffani Thiessen, and Tim DeKay have all said they're on board for a revival of USA original series White Collar
In news that has us staring into the skies with fear in our hearts, waiting for signs of blue skies, white clouds, and a blimp with “You fucked around and now they’re bringing Royal Pains back, too” printed on the side, White Collar creator Jeff Eastin confirmed that a revival of the 2009 USA Network series is now in the works. And we had a joke all primed up to the effect that this was all somehow Suits’ fault, but no, Eastin just came out and said it: “Say thank you to Suits for starting this streaming trend. They were doing great, and got people watching White Collar now on Netflix. That’s doing really, really good. Off of that, it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s do another one.’”
For those of you unfamiliar with White Collar, it was, a little bit, kind of a lot like Suits, actually. (And not just because both shows had titles that were distractingly fashion-adjacent.) The series starred Matt Bomer—who confirmed that he’s “in” for a revival—as a charming corporate con-man who gets brought in by the FBI to help them catch other such criminals, giving it that whole “Our hero catches bad guys, but is also in danger of being caught for his own schemes” element that streaming audiences are apparently willing to tear all the skin off their own faces just to get a taste of.
When Eastin and Bomer made these statements (at Variety’s TV Fest event today), they also got buy-in from co-stars Tim DeKay and Tiffani Thiessen, which means they’ve pretty much got a White Collar quorum. (The show’s other most prominent lead, Willie Garson, died in 2021; the cast promised that Eastin’s script for the revival “honors Willie, too, in a profound way.”)
Reading between the lines, it sounds like what White Collar doesn’t have just yet is a network that’s also signed on to the reboot. (Unlike Suits, which is sending the mostly disconnected Suits L.A. to the big leagues of NBC.) Variety suggests it might go to Hulu, although it’s worth noting that Eastin’s career has been pretty quiet since the series went off the air in 2014. Still, we’ve learned that you don’t bet against USA original series about handsome men in nice clothing both doing and solving crimes in 2024, so, y’know, it’s probably just a matter of time.