Home TV News ‘Ally McBeal’ Revival Series In Development

‘Ally McBeal’ Revival Series In Development

by Dave Elliott

‘Ally McBeal’ Revival Series In Development

According to reports over the weekend, a revival of David E. Kelley’s comedy-drama ‘Ally McBeal’ is in the works, with Calista Flockhart possibly returning to the iconic title role.

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it was set in the fictional Boston law firm Cage and Fish, and starred Flockhart as Ally McBeal, who joins the company co-owned by her law school classmate Richard Fish (Greg Germann), after leaving her previous job due to sexual harassment. However, she’s On her horrified to find that she will be working alongside her ex-boyfriend Billy Thomas (Gil Bellows), whom she has never gotten over. To make things worse, Billy is now married to fellow lawyer Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith), who later joins Cage and Fish. That triangle among the three forms the basis for the main plot for the show’s first three seasons. Although the series was technically a legal drama, it focused less on the cases and more on the personal lives of the lawyers, using the cases as a backdrop to things going on in their own lives.

The original drama ran from 1997 to 2002 on Fox in the USA and turned Calista Flockhart into a major star. Over the course of it’s run it picked up multiple Emmy and Golden Globe awards, along with being nominated for BAFTAs and actors picking up Screen Actors Guild Awards for their various roles.

Alongside Flockhart, Germann, Bellows and Thorne-Smith, the cast included Peter MacNicol, Lisa Nicole Carson, Jane Krakowski, Portia de Rossi, Lucy Liu, and Vonda Shepard. Later seasons added James LeGros, Regina Hall, James Marsden, Julianne Nicholson, Josh Hopkins, Hayden Panettiere, and Robert Downey Jr.

If the revival does go ahead, David E. Kelley would return as exec producer, but had previously expressed that he believes the show should be run by a woman if it was brought back. Given how much the series tended to push the boundaries of sexual interaction in the workplace, it would be very interesting to see how that could be handled in a post-#MeToo world.

There is currently no network or streaming service attached to the potential project, but given it falls under Disney’s ownership at this point, it seems likely it would find a home on either Hulu or ABC. We’ll let you know if the ‘Ally McBeal’ revival moves forward.

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