I just read some pretty exciting news! Dead Like Me is going to be turned into a direct-to-DVD film as a wrap-up of Season 2 (2005)’s loose ends, and a potential new series:

Yes, it’s going straight to DVD […] If it does well on DVD then I guess that will be the deciding factor as to whether or not it goes back to series.

-Ellen Muth (Georgia Lass)

Which is a really exciting prospect, especially as someone who’s loved and cherished the show since about halfway through the first run of the first season on ShowTime. Which leads me to another point: Showtime knows surprisingly little about good television.

They canceled Dead Like Me after two seasons in, despite the fact that the quality of writing, so far as television is concerned, was superb. I haven’t been able to track down its Nielson Family Ratings, but I know that it must’ve done alright, because it got renewed for a second season, and the entire fan base was taken aback when it was canceled at the end of that run. What’s even more frustrating is that I can’t see why Showtime did this.

To free up more money for us to see Kristy Alley make an even BIGGER idiot out of herself than we already know her to be? Or maybe to free up the cash for Weeds to star to oh-so-ever-incredibly-talented-at-NOTHING Mary-Kate Olsen. (Admittedly, the first few episodes of Weeds were OK, but it’s long since gone off the deep end, and only going deeper, so it would seem).

I dunno. If they were replacing DLM with my new favorite TV show, like a House or an Office, maybe, but they cut it for pure junk, in my opinion, and that’s hard to take.

A slightly more interesting development: The apparent reason for Mandy Patinkin (Rube, the other lead in the TV show run of DLM; see also: Inigo Montoya, “you kill my father, prepare to die…” etc.) is that he has his own TV show going on. I remember vividly when I saw he was staring in Criminal Minds, because that was the final nail in DLM’s coffin. American TV shooting schedules are rough enough with only a single program; there’s no way he was going to do two, which meant Dead Like Me wasn’t coming back.

However, that is no longer the case. The shooting for the film has already begun, but maybe Patinkin would be more open to continuing the series now that he’s got the free time. I’m not sure how that would work, in terms of story, given that they’re already trying to explain his absence away in the film without his character there at all.

It could be hard to sell two concurrent 180-degree turns (eg: Rube is gone in the film; He’s back in the new show!) to an already questionably small audience. Me personally? If done correctly, I would easily be able to forgive some hack-job-story-writing (though I’m not sure it needs to come to that) to get Patinkin back with the original cast to continue the show, more or less, where it left off. It was just that good.

I suppose only time will tell.