While it’s true that gender has never been viewed as more fluid than it is today, primetime television programming is still at the mercy of advertiser concerns and wary parents. On the one hand, I could’ve expected as much, given that Let’s Do the Time Warp Again was made for a major broadcast network, despite its historically risqué subject matter.

Unfortunately, Fox’s version of Rocky Horror is a hesitant mashup of the stage and film versions that somehow manages to extinguish the spark of both. There, they meet a fun-loving bunch of out-and-proud “Transylvanian” freaks who spend the rest of the evening chipping away at the couple’s prim and proper worldview by introducing them to a feisty world full of sex appeal, gender-bending characters, and lustful smirks dripping with acidic charisma. The story, as you may recall, is pretty simple: Brad and Janet are a clean-cut pair of young lovers who stumble into a castle after their car breaks down on a dark and stormy night. But stripping Rocky Horror of its specialness is just about the only thing Fox’s adaptation commits to without reservation. Those grand and incredibly weird possibilities mean that to make the musical feel boring would require some real sanitizing effort. It opted not to do a live staging of the original musical, the better to embrace the grand and incredibly weird possibilities Rocky Horror holds.

It added official youth correspondents like Nickelodeon vet Victoria Justice as Janet, the role originally played by Sarandon. Furter, the role Curry played so memorably in the film. It trumpeted the casting of Laverne Cox ( Orange Is the New Black) as Dr. From its debut on a tiny London stage in 1973 to its subsequent 1975 film adaptation starring Susan Sarandon and Tim Curry, the movie’s ensuing cult classic status, and the thousands of midnight screenings that are still held worldwide each year, the horror comedy has always been a legendary celebration of camp and deviant pleasure.įast-forward to 2016, where Fox has been teasing its own version of Rocky Horror (subtitle: Let’s Do t he Time Warp Again) for more than a year now, capitalizing on the trend of TV networks staging their own musicals. The Rocky Horror Picture Show has long been a go-to example of how to pervert traditions and expectations with a knowing grin (and splashy musical numbers, besides).

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