‘Doogie Howser’ Reboot Coming To Disney+ With Multiracial Female Lead
Yet again, Hollywood has picked through the metaphorical brain folds of modern audiences, spotted something that was popular decades go but still retains some name recognition, and decided to resurrect it with a modern spin. The culprit this time:Doogie Howser, M.D., the 1989 ABC sitcom about a teenaged doctor played by a young Neil Patrick Harris.
ADoogie Howserreboot is in development at Disney+ fromHow I Met Your MotherandFresh Off the Boatwriter/producerKourtney Kangspearheading the new iteration. Dust off your stethoscope and get the details below.
According to Deadline, Kourtney Kang is developing aDoogie Howserreboot for Disney+ that currently has the working title ofDoogie Kealoha, M.D.This version will be set in Hawaii and focus on a half Asian, half white 16-year-old girl who works as a doctor. Kang, who was born in Hawaii, evidently wanted to bring a little of her own experience into the series and inject a bit of color into this version. It’s hard to blame her, considering a majority of medical procedurals on television have white leads (and, frankly, are often so bland that they’re practically interchangeable.)
The original series, which was Harris’s big launchpad as an actor, ran for four seasons and became popular enough that the term “Doogie” is still used by those of a certain age to refer to a teenaged expert in a given subject. Kang will executive produce the reboot along withJake Kasdan(Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) and his producing partnerMelvin Marfor 20th Century Fox TV.JesseandDayna Bochco, the son and widow (respectively) of originalDoogie Howserco-creator Steven Bochco, will also serve as executive producers.
Doogie Howser, M.D.was a hit in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but do young Disney+ audiences care about that? I imagine name recognition is probably most effective if an audience has an established relationship with a property instead of just being vaguely aware of it. How many 16-year-olds do you know who have ever heard of this show, let alone seen an episode of it? Are Disney+ execs hoping that parents who grew up watching the series will be scrolling through the service, discover this new version, and convince their kids to watch it with them? It just seems like the ship has sailed on aDoogie Howserreboot. And since Disney+ doesn’t release traditional viewership numbers, I guess we’ll never know how this iterationtrulyperforms on the streaming platform.
