Freaks and Geeks actor Martin Starr confirms that a reunion series is unlikely.
Earlier this week we caught up with American actor Martin Starr, who can currently be seen playing Gilfoyle in HBO’s Silicon Valley. However, much like James Franco, Seth Rogen and Jason Segal, Starr started his career in the brilliant US teen series Freaks and Geeks. The show, set in the 1980’s, followed the teenage drama of Linda Cardellini‘s Lindsay Weir, a mathlete who decides to rebel and starts hanging out with a group of ‘burnouts’.
Sadly the show only ran for one season but struck a chord with a generation, and along with shows like Firefly, often appears in lists of ‘shows cancelled too soon’ or ‘shows that we want back’. Given that platforms such as Netflix seem to be open to the idea of reviving beloved series’ (they are currently bringing Gilmore Girls back) we decided to ask Martin what he thought the chances were of us getting a revival / reunion run.
I don’t think so no. If I had to guess I would say no. I don’t want to disappoint people, I just find it hard to imagine all of those people becoming available at the same time. I don’t think we could do what Arrested Development did, the way they manipulated it and just showed one or two characters at a time and allowed people to still have their crazy hectic schedules. I think this really needs a group dynamic so ultimately it would be very difficult to find the time where everyone was available.
But on top of that I think its something that you also don’t want to f@*k it up (laughs) for lack of a better phrase. It’s so well encapsulated in that eighteen episodes, Judd [Apatow] and Paul [Feig] put so much thought into the arch of that season always thinking that the show was going to get cancelled. We shot the last episode somewhere in the middle of the season because they anticipated the end was nigh. Luckily we got a full eighteen. I find it hard to live up to expectation when that turned out as well as it did and its appreciated as much as it is.
It’s also that perhaps we got lucky with the way it turned out. It’s such a US television thing that you need fifteen years to be a success. Whereas in the UK in general shows are often left at two seasons and are looked back on as a success. They’re looked back on with a lot of appreciation instead of this two seasons means nothing until you get to five or six or seven [in the US]. To be honest sometimes I think keeping it short and sweet and hitting the mark is more valuable.
Whilst it’s not quite the news that we had been hoping for, we completely understand Starr’s logic and let’s face it, not all the shows that have comeback have worked (Heroes Reborn anyone?). Oh well, we’ll just have to made do periodically re-watching our box-set.
