Dear Hollywood: Where is My Gritty Due South Reboot/Revival?

Since my sister Melissa died on March 5th, 2017, every year around that day I try to watch something we both enjoyed.  In 2018 I watched Titanic but that really is too emotional.  I watched Daria in 2019, I forget what in 2020, and The Simpsons in 2021.  

In 2022 I watched Due South, which aired on CBS from 1994-1996 and had a third season air on Canadian TV from 1997-1998.  This was easily my favorite drama of the 90s and probably my favorite cop show of all time.

The premise follows the "buddy cop" model like the Lethal Weapon movies.  In this case a Canadian Mountie named Benton Fraser comes to Chicago after his father is murdered.  He meets Detective Ray Vecchio of the Chicago PD and they start to investigate the crime.  In the end of the pilot episode there's a shootout at Fraser's cabin in the Northwest Territories.  Fraser's father was set up by a friend in the Mounties and it's sort of a black eye for the service.  Fraser is made a pariah and returns to Chicago to work at the consulate there.

From there Fraser and Ray solve crimes on a weekly basis.  Some are more dramatic like encounters with the Mob and the two-part episode where a woman Fraser loved comes to town to frame him for a robbery and murder.  And then other episodes are more comical like a screwball comedy where Fraser has to deliver a reception invitation to ditzy woman's fiancé.  Most walk a balance between drama and comedy so it's usually a fun time without being stupid.

The first season was especially good but towards the end of the second season it started to get a bit more farcical.  The series was cancelled on American TV after a shorter second season but continued in Canada on one of their networks.  A major change was that Ray Vecchio was replaced by Stanley Kowalski, who went by his middle name of Ray.  I never really liked this season as Fraser became more of a Dudley Doright character.  The final episode had Ray Vecchio return and along with Fraser and the other Ray they took down some criminals, after which Ray went to Florida to open a bowling alley for...reasons and Fraser and the other Ray went in search of some mythical treasure for...reasons.  As far as endings go it wasn't great.

Anyway, with all of Hollywood's IP mining of reboots and revivals, why has no one revived or rebooted this yet?  It's a pretty easy concept to reboot and I don't think any of the major actors are dead in real life if you wanted to do a revival.

Given how long it's been, I think a reboot would probably be better.  Or a sort of soft reboot where Fraser could have a son (or daughter) who goes to Chicago to team up with a cop there and the whole thing starts again. One major change since the mid-90s is a section of the Northwest Territories was carved out to be the province of Nunavut.  It would make sense if the new Fraser would come from there and be half or all Inuit so you have some diversity and you can use Inuit stories without whining about "cultural appropriation."

Actually, I already came up with some revival or reboot ideas way back in 1999--just in case you thought I only started doing that kind of spitballing on this blog.  I actually had a page called "Red, White, and Due" with pretty much 0 readers but I just put it out there because I loved the show.  Here's what I came up with back then:

Fans of any show always want it to come back. One time I got a message from a group that was trying to bring back the show "Prey" on ABC (it was some kind of sci-fi series), even though the show had hardly even had one season on ABC. Whenever there is a show that people like, there are always diehards who want to bring it back.

I don’t usually think about bringing shows back on TV, because the chances are usually so small that it’s next to impossible. In the case of Due South, the chance is remote, but better than "Prey". The reason is that the show had two seasons on a major American network and another two on Canadian television. Moreover, the show is now being shown on TNT, so it has the might of Ted Turner on its side. TNT has already taken one existing show and produced a season of it as well as several TV movies and a spin-off. That show was "Babylon 5", which for years was mired in the depths of syndication. When it was picked up by TNT, they produced the final fifth season and launched the spin-off series "Crusade"(although the run was limited to thirteen episodes when contract negotiations went due south). TNT also made the regrettable CHiPs reunion TV movie "CHiPs 99". So given those two cases, how hard would it be for the network to reunite the cast of Due South for a few TV movies or a new series? When that thought struck me I began to wonder about the kinds of stories that could be used to launch the Due South comeback. I meditated upon this for a while and came up with several ideas for two-hour TV movies that would reunite our heroes Fraser and Ray.

The obvious problem is the final episode "Call of the Wild", where Fraser and Fake Ray run off into the wilderness and Ray heads with Stella Kowalski (Fake Ray’s ex-wife) to Florida to start a bowling alley. How can we possibly launch a comeback with that kind of an ending? Actually, it’s really easy based on two assumptions: 1) Fake Ray and Fraser split ways with Fraser remaining in the Northwest Territories and Fake Ray going back to America and 2)Ray and Stella’s relationship falls apart and Ray comes back to Chicago and rejoins the Chicago Police Department. How to make this assumption work doesn’t take any long flashbacks or time-consuming farewell scenes. It only takes two characters and as little as three lines. The two characters are of course Fraser and Ray and here are the basic three lines:

[Setting: Ideally in the Riv, but it can be anywhere]

Fraser: I thought you and...

Ray [Interrupting]: Nah, it didn’t work out. [Pause] I thought you and...

Fraser [Interrupting]: Oh no, he decided he preferred the climate of Chicago to the Territories.

These lines could be used the first time the characters meet, or we could set up a running gag where Fraser and Ray are about to ask each other about Fake Ray and Stella when they keep get interrupted. Finally, at the end, they are able to spit it out. I think that would be funnier, but it doesn’t matter. The reason I said "as little as three lines" is because the characters could of course expound on things, but they don’t really need to. The reason I have them interrupting each other isn’t out of some kind of grudge against Fake Ray or Stella that I don’t want their names mentioned, but because I think that with the chemistry between Ray and Fraser, they already know who the other is referring to.

As to what would happen to Fake Ray and Stella, it doesn’t really matter. They could show up for cameos or not be shown at all. I’d like to avoid the situation in "Call of the Wild" with two Rays running around, so I wouldn’t include Fake Ray. As for Francesca, Huey, Dewey, Thatcher, and other characters it again doesn’t matter. Their parts are not essential, so if they aren’t included it won’t hurt things terribly much. The only ones really vital are Fraser, Ray, and Dief. It would, of course, be easy to work Lieutenant Welch in since he didn’t go anywhere or have any life-changing events happen at the end of "Call of the Wild". Ideally, though, I like it if we could get all of the original producers, directors, etc. to do this comeback special.

Some people I’ve talked to would like to just forget the Canadian seasons, but when I was thinking about this I decided to be realistic. There are probably more Canadian viewers than any other country, so we can’t just disregard those seasons, although it would have made this easier. Besides, I wouldn’t want to do the "Dallas" thing where Fraser, Dief, or someone else would wake up and the Canadian seasons had been a dream or anything stupid like that. That would hurt the credibility of the show, anger some viewers, and just seem pretty cheesy to new viewers.

Now that I’ve effectively set things up, here are the ideas I’ve come up with. Each one has a "working title" to separate it from the others and all take into account the two assumptions made earlier. So to reiterate, Fraser is a Mountie in the Northwest Territories and Ray is a detective with the Chicago Police Department. All of these ideas are intended for a two-hour block of time and as separate movies.

1. The Cover-Up:  In a remote village, an Inuit chief turns up dead and Fraser is called in to investigate. The chief was an outspoken critic of the Canadian government. The trail of the killer leads Fraser back to Chicago where he and Ray team up to solve the case. Ultimately the killer is found, but a wider evil is unearthed as our heroes discover an insidious plot by key Canadian officials to silence the chief.
2. Victoria’s Legacy:  At his cabin in the Territories, Fraser receives a strange letter supposedly from Victoria the criminal he loved, but who fled after trying to frame him for theft, murder, and other crimes. The letter says that she wants to meet him in Chicago to start a new life together. (The reason for the Chicago meeting is more than a convenient way to work Ray back into it. It’s a site both would be acquainted with and much easier for a criminal to hide in than a town in the Northwest Territories.) Torn between love and suspicion, Fraser travels back to Chicago. Instead of his former lover, he finds a trap set for him. After narrowly escaping death, Fraser and Ray track the criminal only to find that it has nothing to do with Victoria, but instead is a trap set by someone Fraser and Ray put in jail.
3. Trail of Blood:  A local guide is killed in the Territories, but even as Fraser begins to investigate, a hunting party is found dead in the forest. The common bond is that both the guide and hunting party were killed with American machine guns. A short distance away is the body of a man carrying that same type of weapon, mortally wounded by one of the hunters. The man is part of a militant group of Quebec separatists bent on violently upheaving the current government in Quebec. The mystery of why Quebec separatists would be in the Territories is solved when Fraser traces the guns back to Chicago, where he and Ray find out that the separatists are purchasing weapons in Chicago and smuggling them into Canada to a remote training camp in the Territories. (This seems a little extreme for a Due South episode, but that’s the glory of brainstorming.)
4. Strange Bedfellows:  A Canadian diplomat is visiting Chicago and Fraser is assigned to the security detail for his experience in the city. Ray is also assigned as part of the local security team and our heroes are thus reunited. However, the diplomat is soon assassinated and Fraser and Ray must work quickly to find the killer before an international incident starts. They soon find that the killer is part of a notorious Chicago crime family (part of the Mafia) paid by the diplomat’s spouse so that they may assume the diplomat’s power (the diplomat can be male or female, thus the mastermind could be a wife or husband depending on casting).
5. Meeting of the Minds:  An international economic conference is being held in Chicago and Fraser and Ray are assigned as part of the security detail. As numerous threats are received, Fraser and Ray must stop a group of terrorists before they blow up the unsuspecting economists and incite worldwide terror.

OK, some of these ideas are better than others, but they all follow a sort of pattern. That is, Fraser and Ray team up once again and have to solve a murder. I chose a murder because if we’re talking a comeback then we want something that is more intense than stealing chickens. As well, it compares to the way the series began. Finally, I’ve got one really wacky, off-the-wall idea if the original cast couldn’t be had whether because of age or unwillingness.

6. Due South: The Next Generation

This would be set in a futuristic dystopia many years after the original show. In the Northwest Province, a Mountie’s father is killed. The Mountie tracks the killer to the city of Chicago, which is full of corruption and where crime operates in the open. The Mountie enlists the aid of a streetwise Chicago cop and they hunt down the killer, but incur the wrath of the criminals in charge of Chicago and corrupt Canadian officials. Ultimately the Mountie and cop survive and thus begins a new series where our heroes take on the evils in Chicago and prove that one man can make a difference.

I think most of my ideas could easily be adapted into a reboot pilot and they're still pretty plausible to do in 2022.  You could have some of the original actors appear but new actors for Fraser and Ray.

I'm just saying, they've done almost everything else, why not a beloved cult classic on both sides of the border?

Fun Facts:  Due South was created by Paul Haggis, who won an Oscar for Crash in 2005.  The show featured before-they-were-star appearances by Mark Ruffalo, Carrie Anne Moss, Ryan Philippe, Maria Bello, and the guy who played Mike in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul.  I occasionally see actors from the show in other things like when David Marciano, who played Ray Vecchio played a cop in an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  I've seen Daniel Kash, who played the detective Louis Gardino, in a few things.  But probably the one I see the most is Callum Keith Rennie, who played Stanley "Ray" Kowalski, who's popped up in movies like Memento and shows like Man in the High Castle.  Since I watched the Candadian Robocop TV series and TV miniseries a few months earlier, I recognized the guy who plays Robocop in the miniseries is a bad guy in the pilot episode who continues briefly appearing in footage used in the credits.  This was one of the first shows I remember watching that used popular music in the show's soundtrack like Sarah McLachlan and The Guess Who along with acts that were probably more popular north of the border.

Less Fun Fact:  As far as I know this isn't really streaming anywhere.  Google said 5 years ago the first season was on YouTube but it might not still be there.  The DVDs I bought in Canada like 17 years ago weren't working a few years ago so I bought a really cheapo set from Amazon where instead of listing episodes individually it strangely groups them together in clumps of 2-4, which is kind of annoying for a show with episodes of about 45 minutes.  The transfer quality is not great either, but like I said it doesn't seem to be streaming so that's really the best alternative at this point.  I think a lot of the problem with it on streaming is that it was a Canadian/American show so there are probably rights issues tangling it up, which might also be why there hasn't been a reboot/revival yet.