‘Misfits’ is getting an American remake because of course it is

Fans of the British television series **Misfits** take notice: your show is being remade in America. Also, we can’t have nice things.

Here’s [the scoop from Deadline](https://deadline.com/2017/06/misfits-remake-fake-empire-freeform-pilot-order-leads-cast-ashleigh-lathrop-tre-hall-allie-macdonald-jake-cannavale-1202108006/):

> Freeform has given a pilot order to Misfits, a supernatural drama inspired by the British series. It comes from Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage’s Fake Empire and Diane Ruggiero-Wright (iZombie, Veronica Mars), who wrote the adaptation and serves as showrunner. Cast as four of the five leads in the pilot are Ashleigh LaThrop (Sirens), Tre Hall (Rebel), Allie MacDonald (Orphan Black) and Jake Cannavale (Nurse Jackie), son of actor Bobby Cannavale. Victoria “Vic” Mahoney (Grey’s Anatomy) is making in her pilot directing debit.

For those of you who don’t know: **Misfits** revolves around a group of juvenile delinquents who in the course of an ordinary day of community service in London get struck by lightning and granted superpowers. Each of them get a superpower related to their personality but since they are misanthropic teens that means that the flirty girl can drive men into a sexual frenzy, and the sprinter with regrets can run back in time, and the girl who is overly concerned with others think of her can read minds, that kind of thing. The hallmark of the show was that it was full of violence and sex and weirdness.

Which is exactly why an American remake on Freeform, a basic cable channel owned by Disney, seems like a terrible idea. To put it succinctly, the show wasn’t pretty ok but the reason you kept tuning in each week was the weirdness and violence and sex. I’m pretty sure that the remake is going to lack at least two of those things.

The character descriptions for the remake series sound pretty close to the originals:

> Lathrop will play Alicia, a spoiled, vapid, middle-class party girl who seems to have three main goals in life: have fun, look hot and get guys. Hall plays Curtis, a talented and cocky football player with a promising career ahead of him who is used to everything going his way. MacDonald plays the tough and trashy Kelly, who is street smart with a hair-trigger temper and a penchant for beating the crap out of people. Cannavale plays Nathan, a con artist and thief with a heavily inflated sense of his own attractiveness, intelligence and potential.

So the setup is at least similar but like I just said I don’t really see how they can sustain the things that made **Misfits** **Misfits** in the first place.

Maybe I’m wrong –I hope I’m wrong– but this seems like a bad idea.