The news that HBO is working with Jonathan Ames to create a film version of slacker noir comedy Bored to Death makes me both excited and sad. On one hand who wouldn't like to see Jonathan, George and Ray – AKA Jason Schwartzman, Ted Danson and Zach Galifianakis – reunite to fight crime, get stoned and drink wine on the big screen? Not least because it will help scrub from fans' minds that decidedly creepy ending: when we left Jonathan, he was squaring his conscience regarding his incestuous relationship with his unaware sister.
Yet it's also true that fans shouldn't start celebrating too soon: talk of a movie might end up being just that. It wasn't so long ago that we were promised big-screen outings for Veronica Mars, a movie the ever-enthusiastic Kristen Bell says she'll fund herself if necessary; Party Down (Rob Thomas, why do you have such bad luck with TV shows?); and even Dawson's Creek. Although as James Van Der Beek has said: "I always love that Michelle is like, 'I definitely wanna do it! I'm in!' Which is so easy for her to say because her character is dead."
Then there's Rome and Deadwood, probably the two shows that come up most often when closure-through-movie is mentioned. Both were prematurely cancelled and both have a strong fanbase desperate for a real ending. Unfortunately, both also have huge casts, many of whom have gone on to significant success elsewhere, and were set in lavishly created, big-budget worlds. Thus, no matter how much I might pray for David Milch to start writing that Deadwood script or Kevin McKidd to don a toga once more, the reality is that movie outings for either project are likely just fantasies.
In any case, we should perhaps question whether we'd even really want film spin-offs of these much-loved TV shows. We should perhaps learn to accept their series finales, even premature ones, and remember Al Swearengen forever calculating the odds behind the bar of the Gem or Titus and Lucius on opposing sides working out what each had gained and lost. Because bolting another ending on to a series isn't always such a good thing. Joss Whedon managed it with Serenity, which picks up six months after the events of Firefly, but too often movie versions weaken our vision of the original rather than amplifying it.
Let's think about Sex and the City. I'm no fan of the original TV series but even I can see that the two subsequent movies are clunky travesties that replace the original's celebration of female friendship with an ersatz approximation of that act. Similarly Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me managed to take everything that made David Lynch's series interesting and daring and render it ridiculous and banal. Imagining the last seven days of Laura Palmer was far more satisfying than seeing them spelled out on screen – and that's before you consider fake Donna, the absence of Audrey and the sheepish expression on Kyle MacLachlan's face in the brief moments he condescends to appear.
Even The X-Files, which produced a solid enough movie version in 1998, got it horribly wrong 10 years later with 2008's clunky The X-Files: I Want To Believe in which David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson trudged around in the snow together, presumably thinking: "Christ, we buried these roles the best part of a decade ago." As for the recent rumours that a big-screen version of Doctor Who is on the way: have they no mercy? I still shudder every time I think of poor Paul McGann in the Tardis. While talk of an Ab Fab movie just seems like a novel way of demonstrating the law of diminishing returns.
Still HBO and Ames aren't alone. In addition to Bored to Death, a 24 film is still expected, Mitch Hurwitz continues to push for an Arrested Development movie (and the new episodes heading to Netflix are rumoured to set things up for such an event) and a big-screen version of Entourage apparently starts filming this spring.
As a television fan I can't help wanting to see many of these characters again, but while my heart says yes, my head instead turns to the wise words of Kyle Chandler. Asked recently about a possible new Friday Night Lights film (which would make it a book that became a film that became a TV series that became a film) the erstwhile Coach Taylor simply said: "My general attitude is that Friday Nights was a great movie and a great TV show … But they ended it at exactly the right time, in exactly the right way as well."
The sad thing is: Chandler is right, and that's why for all my initial joy over a Bored to Death movie, the bitter reality is some memories are best left alone. Yes, poorly considered incest plotlines and all.
What do you think? Would you like a Bored to Death film? What about Deadwood? Or are we better off just remembering these small-screen greats in their prime?
