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Like it or not, we are in the Golden Age of the reboot. 2026 has already seen both Scrubs<\/em><\/strong> and Little House on the Prairie<\/em><\/strong> hit TV screens, while a Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em><\/strong> reboot, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale<\/em><\/strong>, was surprisingly scuttled, seemingly at the last minute by Hulu. On the immediate horizon, there are no less than seven (!), with People<\/em> citing five (Highway to Heaven<\/em><\/strong>, Baywatch<\/em><\/strong>, The Rockford Files<\/em><\/strong>, Bewitched <\/em><\/strong>and A Different World<\/em><\/strong>), HBO’s television adaptation of Harry Potter<\/em><\/strong>, and the latest and greatest, Prison Break<\/em><\/strong>. Of those, it’s The Rockford Files<\/em> that stands out<\/strong>, with the 1974\u20131980 series enjoying a resurgence on the Apple TV Store. Deservedly so, no less, and if you aren’t one of those already rewatching NBC’s greatest detective series, you should be<\/strong>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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\n James Garner Trades the Old West for Modern-Day Malibu With ‘The Rockford Files’ Debuting in 1952, the American Western series Maverick <\/em><\/strong>bucked (no pun intended) the conventions of the genre, with creator Roy Huggins<\/strong> <\/em>saying: “In the traditional Western story, the situation is always serious, but never hopeless. In a Maverick<\/em> story, the situation is always hopeless but never serious.” That edict played out through smart dialogue and open parody of popular Westerns, but the ace in the hole was James Garner<\/strong>. Effortlessly charming, his poker-playing hustler Bret Maverick avoided conflict at all costs, instead using his gift of the gab or the art of bluffing to that end. And if that didn’t work, there was always a back door to escape through.<\/p>\n\n
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Collider Exclusive \u00b7 Action Franchise Quiz<\/span>What Action Series<\/em> Would You Thrive In?<\/span>Wick \u00b7 Fast \u00b7 Mission \u00b7 Die Hard<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t\tFour franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n
\ud83d\udc15<\/span>Wick<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\ud83c\udfc1<\/span>Fast<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\ud83e\udde8<\/span>Mission<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\ud83c\udf84<\/span>Die Hard<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\tFIND YOUR FRANCHISE \u2192<\/label>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n
01<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tHow does a room know you’ve walked into it?<\/span>Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\tA<\/span>Someone recognises me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said.<\/label>B<\/span>Loudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we’re already laughing about something.<\/label>C<\/span>I’m the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived.<\/label>D<\/span>By accident. I wasn’t supposed to be here, and now I’m the only one who can do anything about it.<\/label>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\nNEXT QUESTION \u2192<\/label><\/p>\n<\/section>\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n
02<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tIt turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like?<\/span>Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\tA<\/span>Economical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started.<\/label>B<\/span>Loud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I’m not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup.<\/label>C<\/span>To plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving.<\/label>D<\/span>Badly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more damage than I deal and I still don’t go down.<\/label>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\nNEXT QUESTION \u2192<\/label><\/p>\n<\/section>\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n
03<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tWho is standing beside you when it starts?<\/span>Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\tA<\/span>Nobody. I have contacts, favours and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone.<\/label>B<\/span>Everyone. My people are the entire point, and I’d trade the whole mission for any one of them.<\/label>C<\/span>A small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I’d still take the worst part of the job myself.<\/label>D<\/span>A voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don’t know I exist.<\/label>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\nNEXT QUESTION \u2192<\/label><\/p>\n<\/section>\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n
04<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tIt has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright?<\/span>Act two exists to find out what you’re actually made of.<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\tA<\/span>Focus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction.<\/label>B<\/span>The people counting on me. I don’t appear to have a limit when it’s family on the line.<\/label>C<\/span>Refusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it’s going to be me.<\/label>D<\/span>Spite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building.<\/label>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\nNEXT QUESTION \u2192<\/label><\/p>\n<\/section>\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n
05<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tThere’s a vehicle. What are you driving, and how?<\/span>No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\tA<\/span>A black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it.<\/label>B<\/span>Something impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion.<\/label>C<\/span>A motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorised last night. And then off a cliff.<\/label>D<\/span>A borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down.<\/label>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\nNEXT QUESTION \u2192<\/label><\/p>\n<\/section>\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n
06<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tHow do you feel about the people giving the orders?<\/span>There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\tA<\/span>There are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me.<\/label>B<\/span>I don’t take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out.<\/label>C<\/span>I serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second.<\/label>D<\/span>They’re in a van outside telling me what I’m doing wrong while I’m the one bleeding on broken glass.<\/label>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\nNEXT QUESTION \u2192<\/label><\/p>\n<\/section>\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n
07<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tUnderneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for?<\/span>The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\tA<\/span>Something was taken from me that can’t be replaced, and I’ve been settling that account ever since.<\/label>B<\/span>Belonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I’ll defend it with everything.<\/label>C<\/span>The conviction that if I stop, people die. I don’t know how to hand that to anyone else.<\/label>D<\/span>I just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defence.<\/label>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\nNEXT QUESTION \u2192<\/label><\/p>\n<\/section>\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n
08<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tWhen the credits roll, what do people say about you?<\/span>Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\tA<\/span>That I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to.<\/label>B<\/span>That I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table.<\/label>C<\/span>That I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me.<\/label>D<\/span>That I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to kill.<\/label>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\nREVEAL MY FRANCHISE \u2192<\/label><\/p>\n<\/section>\n\t\t<\/p>\n\n\n\t\t\t\t
Casting Has Been Completed<\/span>Your Franchise Is\u2026<\/span><\/p>\nFour action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJohn Wick \u00b7 Chapters 1\u20134 \u00b7 2014\u20132023<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
John Wick<\/span><\/p>\nYou are precision with a grudge. You don’t posture, you don’t
\nThe Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and Focus, commitment and sheer will. You’d be the one carrying grief through three sequels People wouldn’t call you dangerous. They’d say your name quietly and let that do the\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Fast and the Furious \u00b7 Fast X \u00b7 2001\u20132023<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
Fast & Furious<\/span><\/p>\nYou understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about:
\nThis series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject, You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you You’d thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tMission: Impossible \u00b7 The Final Reckoning \u00b7 1996\u20132025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
Mission: Impossible<\/span><\/p>\nYou over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself
\nThis is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an You’d thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tDie Hard \u00b7 A Good Day to Die Hard \u00b7 1988\u20132013<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
Die Hard<\/span><\/p>\nYou are not the most trained person in the building, the best
\nDie Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned, You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn’t make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, You’d thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, You didn’t want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\u21bb RETAKE THE QUIZ<\/label>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n
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But what does Maverick<\/em> have to do with The Rockford Files<\/em>? Much, with Huggins, who also created The Rockford Files<\/em> with Stephen J. Cannell<\/strong>, asserting that the series is basically Bret Maverick as a modern-day private eye. As a result, the series does the same as its predecessor did, only upending the tropes of the detective series<\/strong>. It centers on Jim Rockford, played by Bret Maverick himself, James Garner, who is pardoned after serving five years in San Quentin Prison due to a wrongful conviction. Yet an ex-convict is still an ex-convict regardless, and with work hard to find, Jim opts to become an independent private investigator.<\/p>\nOnly he has next to none of the stereotypical assets of the TV detective<\/strong>. He doesn’t have a big, luxurious office but rather works out of his mobile home. For that matter, he doesn’t have a big, luxurious home either, with the mobile home also serving as his living quarters, parked in a lot off a beach in Malibu. He avoids or talks his way out of physical altercations when he can, and is decidedly not very good at them when he can’t (not out of cowardice, but practicality: he can’t afford the hospital bills). Where most TV detectives are dressed impeccably, Jim’s style is more blue-collar, like a “truck driver in a suit.” And his ride is a Pontiac Firebird without the bells and whistles. \u200b\u200bBut what he does have<\/strong> is quick-thinking, keen observational skills, the tenaciousness of a dog with a bone, and the tricks of his con-artist past.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n David Boreanaz Has Big Shoes to Fill in ‘The Rockford Files’ Reboot The storylines in The Rockford Files<\/em> may not be entirely serious, but it doesn’t mean that they’re not engrossing. Quite the contrary: the writing is sharp, delivering smart, legitimate mysteries to solve without the self-seriousness that makes more conventional detective series feel formulaic, a predecessor of sorts to shows like Elsbeth<\/em><\/strong>. The dynamics between the characters in the series, particularly Jim’s truck-driver dad Rocky (Noah Beery Jr.<\/strong>) and Angel Martin (Stuart Margolin<\/strong>) feel comfortable and familiar, not forced. And well before
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