The reboot is the latest example of Hollywood’s desperate hunger to mine “intellectual property.” It’s so difficult and expensive to make potential audiences aware of something entirely new that anything with cultural provenance is immediately thought to have a leg up. And what has easier cultural provenance than something that was universally known not so long ago?

There are reboots, remakes, and revivals, not to mention sequels and prequels, and the boundaries between them can get fuzzy. Take the newly announced fall series from CBS called Magnum P.I. It stars an actor named Jay Hernandez, and so it is a remake or a reboot; it would only be a revival if Tom Selleck returned as Magnum and brought with him as many members of the original cast as could be found. But people tend to use the words interchangeably, so it’s best not to get hung up on the terminology.