The iconic shows ripe for a revisit as 90s nostalgia makes way for 2000s waves that is about to hit

Trade in your Tamagotchi for the iPod, because 90s nostalgia is about to make way for the 2000s.

We’ve spent years looking back with rose-coloured glasses at the decade that gave us blow-up chairs, the Spice Girls, Before Sunrise and Seinfeld, and you can feel the winds shifting. Time marches on.

In the past month, we had revivals of two quintessential 2000s American sitcoms – Scrubs and Malcolm in the Middle. We’re about to get more Lord of the Rings movies, directed by Andy Serkis no less, and with Ian McKellan and Elijah Wood confirmed to return.

Then there’s the upcoming Harry Potter TV reboot, which is drawing on a book and film series strongly associated with the first decade of this millennium (the first three books were released in the late-1990s, but the remainder, all the films, and the fever-pitched obsession happened after we partied like it’s 1999).

Last month, Disney released a Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special featuring Miley Cyrus. It wasn’t just a massive throwback in and of itself, the week before its debut, the viewership of the original series on streaming was reportedly up 10 times to that of the week prior.

You can feel it, the shift is upon us, the baton is changing hands.

The typical cultural cycle of nostalgia is 20 to 30 years after the original era, so we are properly in the crossover period.

It’s the right amount of time and distance to the 2000s, and also, the kids who came of age during the 2000s, are now adults who have banked enough experience and be in positions of power to assert their tastes.

If you were born in 1990, and your formative years were in the 2000s, you’re now 36 years old. You have cachet, people are listening to you.

That doesn’t mean that everyone behind those revivals are eager young beavers – the Scrubs and Malcolm revivals were helmed by their original creators (a Gen X-er and a Boomer), but behind the scenes, thirtysomethings have power and influence, whether in decision-making roles at studios or just as part of the public discourse.

Every decade is complex if you lived through it, but the 2000s were markedly distinct from the 1990s.

It started off very differently to where it ended up. As the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1999 (and yes, technically the millennium started in 2001 but culturally, we draw the line at 2000), the world was full of excitement, especially after we knew for certain that Y2K wasn’t going to crash every computer in the world.

A new millennium meant optimism for the future ahead. We were more connected than ever with mobile phones and dial-up internet becoming ubiquitous, and DVDs were more common (no more remembering to rewind those VideoEzy rentals!). Australia was about to host the Summer Olympics.

It had been a decade since the end of the Cold War and western political and cultural forces had triumphed. China was open for business and it seemed that capitalism and globalisation would win out over autocracy.

The conflicts of the 1990s (Rwanda, Bosnia, East Timor, the Gulf War) had either resolved or were fading from view. We were going to totally kill it in this new era.

Then September 11 happened and it changed the global psyche. The tumult of the next few years were compounded by the dot-com bubble bursting, and in Australia, the cynical political exploitation of the Tampa affair, and the national shame that was the Cronulla Riots.

Those of us living in western societies were constantly under stress, scared of becoming the next target of terrorism, while people in Muslim and Middle Eastern diaspora communities had to battle increased racism and discrimination.

If you consider some of the more iconic American TV shows of this era – Lost, The Wire, The Sopranos, Arrested Development, The Shield and Battlestar Galactica – they either played in that sandbox of conflict, siege and the loss of confidence, or directly referenced it.

If you rewatch Boston Legal now, you might be shocked to remember how referential it was to the Bush era and the constant erosion of civil liberties under the cloak of security.

By the time the GFC rolled around towards the end of the decade, our nerves were shot, and it really laid the ground for the “eat the rich” narratives that would follow in the 2010s, especially as it became clear that this huge worldwide economic disaster resulted in very little accountability for those responsible and very little systemic change.

But shifts in TV culture in the US including the waning of the broadcast model in favour of more creatively daring cable networks gave rise to shows such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Weeds and Nurse Jackie, which followed on from The Sopranos to foreground anti-hero characters.

We were better at dealing with complexity and nuance at that time.

Which is what makes 2000s nostalgia an interesting beast. Nostalgia generally works with blinders on – you pick the good and forget the bad – so when we start drawing on that era, expect it to be highly selective.

Do we cherry pick the likes of Nickelodeon and Disney Channel shows, which was at its peak during this time, or do we swing the other way? Although, a lot of that 9/11 siege mentality would translate well to the present moment, even though the tenor of it has coarsened and devolved.

So, what would be ripe for a revisit, either as a reboot or a revival?

ALIAS (2001 – 2006)

Alias had a fantastic premise and a properly shocking twist early on. Sydney Bristow is an arsekicking, master of disguises super spy working black ops for the CIA. She was recruited at university and now is the go-to for any sticky situation.

Then she discovers that she’s not actually working for the CIA but a cabal of bad guys, the criminal organisation known as the Alliance of Twelve, and that her father, Jack, is also part of it. Her world is rocked, and then she turns double agent for the CIA, and turns out her father was part of the US government the whole time? Or something like that.

It gets really convoluted as the show went on, and there’s this obsession with mystical artefacts, but what a great core idea.

Only, in 2026, Sydney Bristow would really be working for the government but the security forces are in complete disarray under, oh, say, a wildly unqualified and immoral commander-in-chief who has turned the CIA into a circus.

VERONICA MARS (2004 – 2007, 2014, 2019)

OK, so Veronica Mars has actually already had two revivals, one of which was a Kickstarter-funded movie. Neither of which were total barnstormers, but it’s always felt like unfinished business.

The series had a plucky female detective, cynical beyond her years but still with a vulnerable core (she’s a marshmallow!), and with great insight into the haves-and-have-not divide of her community. Sounds pretty relevant still.

Bring Veronica back and give her a meaty case to solve because the murder mystery obsession refuses to, ironically, die. Her brand of scepticism and whip-smart instincts would thrive in this era, and we need Veronica to lay out the facts more than ever in this truth-challenged world.

THE SECRET LIFE OF US (2001 – 2005)

This needs to be a reboot, a la Heartbreak High. It can exist in the same universe, but follow a new generation of characters. It was also a story about normal people just trying to make it and find themselves as they juggled their ambitions, love lives and friendships. More of that please!

The Secret Life of Us supercharged the careers of so many Australian actors including Samuel Johnson, Deborah Mailman and Joel Edgerton (Claudia Karvan was already quite famous), and it would be great to have another platform for up-and-comers now.

Although given the housing and rental crisis, young people can’t afford to live in cool places like St. Kilda anymore.

Instead of meeting at the neighbourhood bar, it’ll more likely be gatherings under that one tiny tree the developers put in for greenery in a black-roofed, sterile planned community 50kms away from the nearest theatre.

THE O.C. (2003 – 2007)

Can we have some version of the original vibes of The O.C. crossed with Succession?

So it would still have sunny California and the relatively low stakes dramas of privileged teens with cool wardrobes, excellent taste in indie rock and a secret drug problem.

But also a more vicious skewering of the wealthy elite of Orange County, whose monied residents are now freaking out over the federal government deporting all their staff, and then have to either fend for themselves or, god forbid, pay living wages to someone with papers.

Or maybe The O.C. really is just such a naive product of the 2000s that it can never be transported to another time, encased in a snowglobe as it always was.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES (2004 – 2012)

But maybe let’s make it Desperate Househusbands, where the men have too much time on their hands and are getting sick of endless rounds of golf or games of pickleball.

So they start a secret fight club just to feel alive again. One night, someone dies during a fight, and instead of trying to discover the truth of that death, it’s all about trying to cover it up.

Hijinks ensue, secrets are exposed, someone is over-leveraged because they invested too much money in a protein powder scam, everyone is cheating on their wives, maybe with each other, and one of them definitely becomes a manosphere influencer.

Ugh, sounds like a nightmare.