Top five 1970s TV shows turned movies

Hollywood certainly likes to do its fair share of recycling and we’re not talking separating its plastic bottles from its waste paper. Instead, it likes to re-use past ideas, re-working them into something that speaks to modern audiences and it’s not too fussy about its source material either. Consider that back in the late 1940s, the American film industry feared the advent of television as an entertainment usurper that would steal its viewers. Fast forward a few years and note how much has changed. Not only has the big screen embraced the small, but the relationship has become so friendly that TV has become a font of inspiration for the movie community offering a wealth of suggestions ready to make the transition.

And the latest TV to film crossover is Land of the Lost, a comedy starring Will Ferrell as palaeontologist Dr Rick Marshall who, along with his research assistant, Holly Cantrell (Pushing Daisies’ Anna Friel) and redneck tour guide Will Stanton (Pineapple Express’s Danny McBride) is sucked into a time-space vortex (that old chestnut) and transported to a parallel universe populated by dinosaurs and other fantastical fiends. Not that everyone will be familiar with the original, a 1970s family adventure series that only survived for three seasons, but we’re happily celebrating the movie’s roots and so are checking out five other top films based on 1970s TV shows.