There's an old episode of The Avengers series in which Emma Peel (played by Diana Rigg) and John Steed (played by Patrick Macnee) are apparently transported back into another century. Of course, our TV heroes soon see through this subterfuge, and the villain is foiled.
In the real world of today, the villains seem to be getting away with producing second-rate replicas of the past and selling them at inflated prices. Movies, TV shows and pop songs are being remade - not in their original forms, but in grotesque, updated versions which are being passed off as improvements. They're being genetically modified to produce multi-million dollar mutations which are vastly inferior to the originals.
Hollywood remakes of two 1960s' TV series, Lost in Space and The Avengers, are playing at my local multiplex, while the latest smash hits by Bill Withers and The Jackson Five waft over the airwaves. Someone has carefully reconstructed the sights and sounds of my youth in an effort to trick me into thinking I've gone back in time, but done it so badly that I'm not fooled for one minute.
Lost in Space is a campy American sci-fi adventure, and The Avengers is a campy British spy caper. Both remakes were big-budget productions, boasting state-of-the-art visuals, blockbuster action sequences, and big name actors. Despite the big Hollywood treatment, both movies lost out in the translation from TV to cinema. Lost in Space, starring William Hurt, Mimi Rogers and Gary Oldman, jettisoned the camp style of the original series; The Avengers, starring Ralph Fiennes as Steed and Uma Thurmann as Emma Peel, simply lost the plot. The producer of The Avengers, Jerry Weintraub, refused to allow any press previews of the movie, but when it opened two weeks ago, both critics and audiences gave it the Emma Peel-style karate chop.
Lost in Space fared better, gaining a somewhat favourable critical response and acquitting itself well at the box office, although many lamented the loss of kitsch which made the original series so charming. And what happened to Dr Smith, the cowardly charlatan played by Jonathan Harris, who uttered such timeless catchphrases as "Never fear, Smith is here!" or "Oh, the pain! The pain!" He's been replaced by Gary Oldman, playing the nasty evil villain part he has been perfecting through movies such as Leon and Air Force One. And what have they done to the Robot, the vacuum cleaner on wheels with a lightbulb for a head, who shouted "Warning Will Robinson!" in deadpan electronic tones while waving his two hosepipe arms in the air? He has been upgraded too, changed into a cybernetic machine more suited to Robocop or Terminator 2.
The Lost in Space series featured a cutesy all-American family dressed in bacofoil, wandering around a studio backlot and encountering monsters in silly costumes. The Avengers saw a man in a bowler hat and a woman in a catsuit doing battle with spies, secret agents, cyborgs and murderous suitcases, taking everything in their stride, with a wry remark and a quick-but-deadly karate chop. Mulder and Scully would have laughed in disbelief, but not me. I hid behind the couch whenever an alien jumped out and menaced Will Robinson, and I sneaked downstairs at night to peek through the living room door and watch The Avengers, because its psychological overtones and high murder count were considered too disturbing for children my age.
Hollywood can remake all my favourite TV shows of the past - Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, Doctor Who, Thunderbirds and The Man From UNCLE to name but a few - but they'll never recreate the magic of being a kid and seeing those programmes the first time round.
Bereft of ideas of its own, Hollywood is pouncing on every small, helpless TV series, mashing it up, repackaging it and serving it up for consumption by a public which has become hooked on brand names. Classic TV titles are familiar and friendly, denoting an idyllic, innocent time when all we needed to entertain us was a small black box in the corner of the room. Call it "the Waltons factor", that craving for comfort which popular culture satisfies through television remakes. It's a strong impulse, and it can pull even the most forward-looking adult back into that time tunnel.
As for the music scene, two recent Top 10 hits, Will Smith's Just the Two of Us and Puff Daddy's Come with Me, are remakes of original tunes, the former by Bill Withers and the latter a version of Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. Both are abominable. Smith - the star of Men in Black and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - adds nothing to the Withers tune except an inane rap, while Puff Daddy, who had a worldwide No 1 with a rap version of The Police's Every Breath You Take, turns one of Zep's finest epics into an overblown monstrosity of Godzilla proportions, aided and abetted by the song's co-writer, Jimmy Page. These are just the latest episodes in a mass looting of pop's back catalogue, from Boyzone's over-reliance on old Bee Gees hits to rap's dependency on golden oldies to prop up its increasingly irrelevant spiel.
This year, the remixers and would-be beatmasters have turned their knobs towards the golden age of disco, and former hits by KC and The Sunshine Band, Kool and The Gang and The Jackson Five have been tweaked and twitched to make them more floor-friendly. You've heard the one by The Tamperer featuring Maya - you know, the one that goes "what's she gonna look like with a chimney on her head?" Within days of that record becoming a hit, club DJs were opting to play the original - and far superior version - by The Jackson Five. A new house version of The Trammps' Disco Inferno is currently doing the rounds - I can predict that clubbers will be sick of it by mid-September, while the original will continue to be played 20 years after it was first released.
But before you start writing me off as a retro luddite, let me just state that I love the idea of sampling old tunes and retelling old stories when it's done creatively. For every cack-handed remix, there's always a sublime cut by a sussed DJ. The current Top 10 hit, Music Sounds Better With You, by French dance group Stardust, is a good example, and the man behind it, Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter, has already proved himself a discoera plunderer par excellence. Belfast DJ David Holmes can use the funk beats of the past to deliver the fresh, hip-swinging tracks on his current album, Let's Get Killed.
But what does the future hold? Can we look forward to remakes of The Love Boat, Kojak, Starsky & Hutch, The Dukes of Hazzard and The Six Million Dollar Man? Will the charts be awash with new versions of songs by The Human League, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club, Kajagoogoo and Yazoo?
Probably. But though they'll be pasteurised, homogenised and watered down for mass consumption, they'll never replace the real vintage cheese.