Why remake a show like "Kojak," which featured a larger-than-life character who was proudly Greek-American (played by a proudly Greek-American actor) and cast an African-American in the title role?
Uh, nobody involved with the new "Kojak" seems to know.
The new "Kojak," which premieres tonight at 8 p.m. on cable's USA network, has a few things in common with the old "Kojak," the 1973-78 series that made Telly Savalas a huge star:
Lt. Theo Kojak (now played by Ving Rhames) is a tough New York City police detective.
He's bald.
He sucks on lollipops.
But there's no "Who loves ya, baby?" this time around. Which is just as well — the new Kojak is hard to love.
Old Kojak was tough. New Kojak is tougher. If by "tougher" you mean "ready to resort to vigilante-like violence when he's not weeping." Really. Rhames seems mostly interested in chewing the scenery. It's sometimes not pretty.
Particularly when the new "Kojak" is "all about Ving Rhames," according to executive producer Tom Thayer.
The two-hour premiere (which repeats Sunday and will be followed by eight hourlong episodes beginning Sunday, April 3), features the hunt for a serial killer — which we've seen, oh, about a million times before in cop shows. Kojak makes it personal and will stop at nothing to bring the killer to justice.
Sometimes it's so over-the-top you'd almost think it's supposed to be parody. But it isn't.
And, quite frankly, having an African-American named Theo Kojak is sort of non-sequitur . . . except, apparently, to the people making this remake. Rhames, Thayer and USA network president Bonnie Hammer all bobbed, weaved and obfuscated when asked why the name "Kojak" had been slapped on something that has so little to do with the original show.
"It was, in many ways, irrelevant what the ethnicity or background was," Hammer said.
But that's disingenuous, given that the original was so much about the character's ethnicity. Not that this would have occurred to anyone involved in the remake, since they've taken the title, the lack of hair and the lollipop and slapped it on something that might just as easily have been titled "Mannix" or "Columbo."
"We haven't looked back at all. It's all been forward-looking," Thayer said.
Rhames said he'd never even watched the original.
"I grew up on 126th Street in Harlem, and I was born in the '60s," he said. "I never watched 'Kojak.' We were watching 'Good Times.' Who wanted to see a white man arresting some black people (while) growing up in Harlem?"
So, again, why use the title?
"I mean, I think 'Kojak' gets you in the door," Thayer said.
But that seems rather unlikely — the show ceased production almost three decades ago and hasn't been seen on TV in years.
Gee, do you suppose it could have anything to do with the fact that Universal Television owns the title? That Universal recently merged with NBC? That NBC Universal owns USA?
"We're always looking at the quality of the library that exists and what projects could potentially have legs or would make sense in this day and time," Hammer said.
The truth at last.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com