Tv shows or movies that would transition well to Sci-Fi elements being added?

[Evil Robert]

Add sci-fi to any schlocky soap opera and you have Twin Peaks.

Lord knows Days of Our Lives did that for many years (the most famous of them being Marlena's posession storyline - but they had plenty of others from MALESWEN, 90% of Stefano's stuff, various ultra high tech that didn't exist at that point (and the characters calmly discussing it), even to smaller degree the 5 faces of Kristen Di Mero storyline - though that just was plain soapy by the end of it)

And Guiding Light I kid you not did a clone storyline in the late 90s.

 

[Samurai8472]

"This is Us"

Alternate reality where Randal didn't get adopted by the Pearsons and their 3rd child survived.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Cozy mysteries are supposed to be predictable. The formula is what makes them cozy. By the same token, episodic television in those days was mostly about providing a consistent, familiar experience from week to week.

And that’s why those kinds of shows are bad shows.

It’s not even an episodic vs serial question. Shows like The Office had some arcs but basically each episode was standalone. And each was a little different. Having every episode be self contained does not mean every episode has to be identical.

It’s the difference between recurring characters in SNL vs Kids In The Hall. In Kids In The Hall, each appearance of a character puts them in a new situation, with different jokes and different punchlines. In SNL, they cycle through the exact same punchlines every time. The Kids characters are just as cozy but much less boring.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I used to have it on as background noise, and just kind of half watched, and I was shocked when there actually was an episode where someone called her out on how she always stumbled into murders, and how half of her family was accused of murder at one point or another.

My mom is very good at this, and it drives me crazy at times, she can usually figure out who the killer is within 10 or 15 minutes, and she's almost always right.

In those kinds of shows though isn’t it less about learning to solve mysteries and more about learning the show’s formula?

You know who the killer is not because you applied insight to the human condition and plugged it into deductive reasoning from the evidence. You know because the situation reminds you of other episodes and you know what happened in those episodes.

 

[Christopher]

And that’s why those kinds of shows are bad shows.

That's like saying taxicabs are bad cars because they aren't high-end race cars, or that breakfast cereal is bad food because it isn't a gourmet meal. They just fill a different role, that's all. There's room in the world for ordinary, everyday things, and it's possible for something to be a very good ordinary, everyday thing even if it's not good in the way something more daring and exceptional is.

Again, TV mysteries like Murder, She Wrote or Perry Mason, and prose mystery series like Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple, were formulaic by design, because they were puzzles. People who like solving puzzles enjoy getting new ones on a regular basis, and the sameness is a feature rather than a bug. It's like those of us who subscribe to the New York Times crossword puzzle. We get the same kind of puzzle every day, they all work basically the same way, and they often feature very familiar words and clues, and yet each one is a new challenge. If that sort of thing isn't to your personal taste, fine, but that doesn't make it objectively bad.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

If every episode is the same, why do you need to watch more than one episode?

A sandwich doesn’t have to be gourmet steak, but there’s still good sandwiches and bad sandwiches. A natural ham and cheese sandwich sandwich is good, a processed ham and processed cheese product sandwich on wonderbread is bad.

I haven’t seen the shows you mention, but I wouldn’t call every Columbo episode identical. You can have a formula and still have every application of it be it’s own unique thing.

A basic hamburger still needs seasoning, and garbage like Full House has none of it.

 

[captainkirk]

Again, TV mysteries like Murder, She Wrote or Perry Mason, and prose mystery series like Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple, were formulaic by design

I'll disagree with you on Sherlock Holmes being formulaic (I haven't read any Miss Marple, so I can't comment on that.) One of the things I always liked about the short stories is that they weren't always the same formula. Some were very similar to each other, but the majority were quite varied. You have stories like The Yellow Face and The Man With the Twisted Lip where no actual crimes are committed, as well as murder mysteries where the culprit is known but the method isn't like The Speckled Band. The variety of the mysteries is something I find lacking in TV mystery series, not that I don't enjoy those as well.

 

[Owain Taggart]

People who like solving puzzles enjoy getting new ones on a regular basis, and the sameness is a feature rather than a bug.

And it's the same reason why Escape rooms have really taken off, because they give people a mystery to solve, often with being paired into teams to solve them. Each escape room might in theory have the same basic structure and formula, with themes setting them apart.

 

[Christopher]

If every episode is the same, why do you need to watch more than one episode?

They're not the same. Their structure is the same, like crossword puzzles or limericks. The content within that structure is different each time. Mysteries are challenges to the mind, and each challenge is new even if it's the same kind of challenge. Why do people play more than one game of Tetris, or solve a Rubik's Cube more than once, or buy more than one jigsaw puzzle? It's the same kind of challenge, but each time is different.

I haven’t seen the shows you mention, but I wouldn’t call every Columbo episode identical. You can have a formula and still have every application of it be it’s own unique thing.

Yes, that is exactly my point -- that formulaic shows are not automatically bad, that there can be excellent work done within the formula. So now you're completely contradicting your earlier, quite false generalization that every formulaic show is automatically bad. If you know that's not the case, why did you say it in the first place?

There were times when Murder, She Wrote was actually a very good example of a formulaic mystery show, especially when J. Michael Straczynski was its showrunner, although there were other times when it wasn't so great. Elementary was a very good formulaic procedural. The Rockford Files was a very good formulaic private-eye show. Perry Mason was generally a very good formulaic courtroom drama. And so on. Doing the same thing over and over does not preclude doing it well.

 

[JD]

I think the best example of a formulaic murder mystery right now would be NCIS, and NCIS: New Orleans, and both still find plenty of interesting things to do with their characters and interesting unique cases to keep things from getting repetitive.
NCIS: LA changes things up a bit more since they tend to be going after terrorists and other kind of bad guys rather than just always investing murders.

 

[Owain Taggart]

What I love about Murdoch Mysteries is that by being set in the past, it has created a niche of having some historical figures, some of which either become suspects or help in the course of investigations or have to be protected. We've seen people such as Teddy Roosevelt (more than once), Tesla (Also more than once), or even people who are not yet famous but will be in context with the time-period, such as Lucy Maud Montgomery or even H.P Lovecraft.

 

[JD]

Didn't William Shatner just play Mark Twain on that recently?

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, he did. In the 9th season in 2015. Personally, he was just OK, but he wasn't my favourite personification of Twain. He was kind of... plain.

https://murdochmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Marked_Twain