Everything comes back on television. Platforms introduce advertising breaks into their content. Prime Video revolutionized streaming with the broadcast of OT live galas. Netflix is ??now even interested in producing case series. And, in this involution of the medium, another symptom: Baywatch, the epitome of conventional television, will return.

“Daring ocean rescues, pristine beaches and iconic red swimsuits are back, as is a new generation of Baywatch, navigating their complicated and messy lives in this action-packed reboot that proves there is a “family you are born into and a family you find,” indicates the official synopsis of the project, titled Baywatch in English.

It is a Freemantle production that has obtained a firm commitment from the American channel Fox: the scripts are being written and, if the project does not finally receive the green light, Fox will have to pay a penalty to the production company. These types of agreements are usually signed when the channel in question assumes that work will be done on the development of the series until it is ready for filming and broadcast.

If the original series was created by three men, Michael Berk, Greg Bonann and Douglas Schwartz, these Baywatch will have a woman as head of the writers’ room and showrunner: Lara Olsen, who has made a career in free-to-air television from the US with series such as Without Appointment, 90210: The Next Generation or Reign.

Fox is considering the production of the reboot as a possible series to fill its programming in the summer, surely for 2025, in what is interpreted as a return to light plots. The country’s free-to-air channels, in fact, have recently been clear about what their objective is: to produce classic, accessible and recognizable fiction, aware that this is what the public expects from them and that it best adapts to the traditional grill.

Baywatch, despite having become a recurring joke due to the level of interpretation and the sexualization of the bodies of the cast members, was a more than profitable franchise at the time: between 1989 and 2001 it aired 241 episodes spread over 11 seasons, a farewell movie and a spin-off like Baywatch Nights, with David Hasselhoff solving cases at night with two private detectives.

Baywatch served to keep David Hasselhoff on the front line of television after becoming known in the soap opera The Young and the Restless, where he was between 1975 and 1982, and then moving to primetime with The Fantastic Car, between 1982 and 1986. She also served as a shuttle for actors such as Pamela Anderson, Carmen Electra and Jason Momoa, who was in the two seasons set in Hawaii before rising to stardom a decade later with Game of Thrones.

It is sold as a reboot (that is, as a reset of the fictional universe) but it remains to be seen if some of these actors could return, whether as veterans, guest actors or recurring characters. Among the lifeguards with the most episodes under their belts are Yasmine Bleeth, Alexandra Paul, Michael Newman, Gena Lee Nolin, David Chokachi and David Charvet.