Classic TV Shows Go Under the Knife

Charlie's Angels was an integral part of my childhood, and possibly even my development. So it's a little shocking to think about each episode being boiled down to a five-minute plotline. But that's exactly what Sony Pictures Television plans to do with classic shows like Charlie's Angels, T.J. Hooker, Starsky and Hutch, and, uh, Ricki Lake.

The butchered episodes will appear online featuring the same plots as the originals, only condensed. Really condensed. Influenced by the success of YouTube and its supershort video clips, Sony is working on creating minisodes--three-and-a-half to five minute versions--of its classics. Here's the president of Sony Television explaining to the New York Times how a Charlie's Angels episode might go: "They have a meeting, Charlie’s on the intercom telling them what the assignment is, there’s a couple of fights, and then a chase, and they catch the bad guy."

Even Ricki Lake is getting a makeover--guests will be introduced, they'll fight, they'll make up. End of show. If you want to catch the action, look for these minisodes to debut in June on the Minisode Network, an online site that will initially be hosted on MySpace.

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