Editorial Staff
In January we learned that The CW is resurrecting ‘90s hit “Roswell”. Based on a series of popular novels by Melinda Metz called Roswell High, the show will retell the yarn of a group of folks in Roswell, New Mexico – some human, some non-human.
We were lucky enough to get a peek at the pilot script for the new take this week – and fans of the original (of which I’m one) will be glad to hear that it does offer something new.
The new “Roswell” definitely isn’t the show Dido lend her lungs to fifteen years ago. This is, instead, a very adult and very topical update of the – let’s admit it – super entertaining TV series (sorry, but it’s gonna be hard to top). Main difference this time? Despite playing from the same songbook as the original novels and previous TV series in that it’s still about three aliens, disguised as humans, who are trying to conceal their secret, the main characters, those who were previously in high school in the original version, are a lot older. About ten years older. Surprising then, given the decision to have the mains be adults, that they didn’t just make the thing a sequel to the original series and bring back those original actors. Still, we can be fortunate they didn’t straight-up remake the original.
Here’s 10 things we know about the new “Roswell” :
- The main extra-terrestrial trio are older in this version (all out of high school and in their twenties) : Max is a cop (though he wanted to be a writer in high school), Isobel is married (to Noah, who doesn’t know her secret) and they’re trying for a baby, and Michael, a tad indignant since high school, continues to hold onto a bit of a resentment (“brooding is my default setting”) that he’s never had a family.
- Liz Ortecho, a Mexican-American, was working on experimental regenerative medicine but the funding fell through so she’s now back at the Crashdown café, the same job she worked during high school.
- Same scenario: Max brings Liz into the circle, inadvertently, after he saves her life. They were high school lab partners but until now haven’t had a lot to do with each other.
- Liz isn’t too popular in town because of some deaths her sister is responsible for and the fact that her family are immigrants. Officer Evans goes into bat for her.
- Kyle is ‘Dr. Kyle Valenti’, a young GP who is back in Roswell – from Iowa – to finish his residency. Liz bumps into him at the hospital after her accident.
- Kyle’s father (William Sadler playing that part in the original) has passed in this incarnation.
- Michael and Maria, an eccentric wannabe clairvoyant from high school, have a past but it’s been over a long time. She’s still very concerned about him and – along with former classmate Alex – starts snooping around his property after they get detect high levels of Phenyl-2 there. What’s he up to?
- Isobel isn’t that fond of Maria, after all she ruined homecoming all those years ago and she “never got that fake blood out” of her dress.
- Isobel is afraid that if she does have a baby it will be “different” and then her secret will be exposed.
- The reboot is definitely a bit edgier and more adult-skewed – and that includes a bit of a coarse language, and quite a few nods to sex, something the WB incarnation definitely didn’t have.
Are you pumped for the new “Roswell”?
