Aiming to liven up a TV season that threatens to grow moribund with adaptations of semi-recent movies by also throwing in some reboots of classic television shows, Fox has picked up an update of The Courtship Of Eddie’s Father, adding it to a list that includes The Greatest American Hero, Lost In Space, Bewitched, and whatever else is announced before Monday, Jesus Christ, let’s just get to the weekend already. The newish series hails from Conan O’Brien’s Conaco, White Collar producer Willie Garson, and husband-and-wife writing duo Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett, and is a remake of the 1969 series of the same name. That series was itself an adaptation of the 1963 movie starring Glenn Ford and Ron Howard, which was in turn adapted from the book by Mark Toby, which was based on the idea that men need to be married, otherwise their lives are incomplete.
Like all of the previous iterations of Eddie’s Father, including a failed remake the WB tried in 2004 with Ken Marino, this updated version will find widower Tom Corbett trying to raise his young son, who is oddly—some might say unhealthily—involved in his romantic life, manipulating it so that he can get a new mother. So far, no one is attached to take on Bill Bixby’s Emmy-nominated role, in a series that will presumably last a single episode wherein Eddie’s father shows him Tinder and is like, “Thanks, I’ve got this.”
The original series may be most fondly remembered for its Harry Nilsson-penned theme song, “Best Friend,” which remains free to listen to and doesn’t require rebooting an entire TV show. Here, see?