OK, we admit it. We haven’t watched any of 90210, and nobody else has either. But that’s all about to change, because 90210’s knight in shining armour is charging over the horizon to resurrect its ratings – that’s right, Shannen Doherty is returning to the show!

According to the woman herself, Shannen Doherty is set to appear in the 90210 season finale. Finally, someone with enough star power to hold down a supporting part in a 2007 made-for-TV Christmas movie. You’re saved, 90210! Saved!

When it was announced that Beverly Hills 90210 was being developed into a spin-off, everybody knew that it could go one of two ways – it could either do a Battlestar Galactica and become a deadly serious space opera full of impenetrable allegories to the Iraq war, or it’d be a sort of shitty OC rip-off full of relentlessly braying knobends who all appear to think that the universe revolves around them even though their all-time life highpoint is bound to be involve acting in a Clearasil commercial.

Needless to say, it turned out to be the latter.

However, that’s not to say that 90210 is all bad. In fact, it performs an important social function by keeping some of the original Beverly Hills 90210 cast in gainful employment. If 90210 hadn’t given Tori Spelling a minor recurring role, there’s a fairly strong chance that she’d currently be pushed up against the outside of a restaurant window awkwardly begging diners for scraps.

As for Jennie Garth, well let’s just say that 90210 has probably stopped her from joining the human trafficking trade.

And then there’s Shannen Doherty. Shannen Doherty was the beating heart of Beverly Hills 90210 – albeit the obnoxiously bratty beating heart who seemed to hate every minute of it – and, after one headline-grabbing appearance on the 90210 spin-off, she’s decided to make her glorious return during the show’s finale. But only because she likes the show. It hasn’t got anything to do with her film career imploding more than a decade ago, you hear? The Press Association reports:

Shannen Doherty has revealed she’s returning to the Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off. The actress reprised the role of Brenda Walsh for a few early episodes of the series, 90210, and has now confirmed the character will be back for the season finale. She told E!: “You’re the first people I’ve told. It is the finale, so you can probably expect a lot of drama.”

Yes, you read that right – Shannen Doherty is going to bring a lot of drama to the 90210 finale. We don’t think she means onscreen by the way, since just about the most dramatic thing to happen in the show so far involves a girl having the hots for the editor of the school paper.

But Shannen Doherty is definitely going to bring the drama offscreen, where she plans to kick over a craft services table and pin a chef to a wall by his throat because the sandwiches have been cut into rectangles instead of triangles.

But will Shannen Doherty’s return make us watch 90210? No. And the reason is simple – the show’s title hasn’t been abbreviated enough. Going from Beverly Hills 90210 to 90210 is just lazy. Call us when it’s called 9021, or Ni- and then we’ll think about it.

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Actually we're just pulling your leg. We're not excited at all. We're old enough to remember what Beverly Hills 90210 was like last time around – a pastel-shaded faux-aspirational thump through the lives of several guffawing non-entities who all thought they were at the exact centre of the universe because their chinos were quite expensive. It was dreadful.

But don't worry if you can't remember what the original Beverly Hills 90210 was like, because the new Beverly Hills 90210 looks set to be exactly the same. Even down to the cast members – as well as the inevitable role for Tori Spelling, Shannen Doherty is rumoured to appear as well. And maybe Jason Priestley, too, so long as he can get someone to cover his shifts holding up that Golf Sale sign.

If you had to make a list of all the TV shows you didn't want to see get remade, chances are Beverly Hills 90210 would be near the top of the list, alongside Minipops and Highway To Heaven. But your god clearly hates you, because a Beverly Hills 90210 remake is what you're getting.

Apparently the new Beverly Hills 90210 is going to be based around… look, you don't want to know what the new Beverly Hills 90210 will be like, because you'll get depressed and fling yourself out of a window and we'll get blamed and it won't be nice for anyone. But, so as not to leave you too disappointed, here are three definite truths about the new Beverly Hills 90210:

1 - Hilary Duff isn't going to be in it.

2 - It'll be about a bunch of obnoxious rich kids, and every fifth episode will focus on an arbitrary social issue like drugs or anorexia and it'll hammer the audience over the head with a moral message so clunky that it'll make kids rush out and do the exact opposite.

3 - Everyone who appeared in the original Beverly Hills 90210 will be in it whether you like it or not.

Sadly, this isn't a lie. Tori Spelling from that horrible reality show is set to return as Donna Martin, Jennie Garth from no other shows ever is set to return as Kelly Taylor and now it looks as Shannen Doherty from a rubbish thing about dating and a solitary minor car crash is about to return as well. Variety reports:

Shannen Doherty is in talks to reprise her role as Brenda Walsh in the CW's upcoming spinoff series "90210," the network confirmed Doherty starred on the original "Beverly Hills, 90210" from 1990-1994, before she was let go from the show after a series of onset clashes. That skein, exec produced by Aaron Spelling and created by Darren Starr, ran on Fox from 1990-2000.

Clearly the inclusion of Shannen Doherty in the new Beverly Hills 90210 punts the show up from 'desperately unwatchable' to 'watchable only in clip form on the internet when it turns out to be awful'. But if Shannen Doherty is returning, who else will come back?

So far, nobody. That's because Beverly Hills 90210 catapulted them to the realms of such superstardom that they're now all too expensive to be invited them back. Or because the producers don't know if they're alive or dead any more and they're too lazy to find out. One or the other.

Yup, that Hilary Duff’s a hot piece of property at the moment, or at least she would be if we could work out what the point of her was. You know what Hilary Duff would be great in? A creatively-bankrupt revisiting of a TV series that everyone stopped liking about 18 months into its 10-year run almost 20 years ago.

What’s that? There’s a part going spare in the new Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off? Well that’s certainly very fortunate for both Hilary Duff and Beverly Hills 90210. Not so much for us, though – we think Beverly Hills 90210 is going to be shit and that Hilary Duff’s a wanker.

It’s probably easiest to think of Hilary Duff as a kind of proto Miley Cyrus, albeit one who didn’t tit around topless like an underage whore so much. Hilary Duff had the hit TV show, the CDs and the creepy murder-fetish stalker.

Trouble is, though, Hilary Duff is now 20, and in dog years that’s 93. Fortunately Hilary Duff isn’t a dog, so this isn’t relevant. But, unfortunately, one dog year is roughly equal to one washed-up tween hag year, and Hilary Duff is one of those. What’s a girl to do?

Well, Hilary Duff could continue churning out Lizzie McGuire shows and movies until she’s visibly middle-aged and not the least bit convincing (known in the trade as ‘pulling a Sabrina The Teenage Witch), but she won’t do that.

Otherwise Hilary Duff could rely on her newly-official sexiness to open up a few doors, but that tactic’s hampered by the fact that the only people who find Hilary Duff sexy are Austrian men who lock their children in the cellar and have sex with them.

So it’s just as well that the new Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off might have Hilary in its sights. Fox reports:

According to E! sources, Duff’s potential character is called Annie Mills. Annie is a Beverly Hills High student who is into theater acting, just like Shannen Doherty’s character, Brenda, was on the original show. She yearns to fit in with the alternative crowd and leans a lot on her adopted brother, Dixon. Both Duff’s publicist and The CW, which is expected to debut the “Beverly Hills” spin-off this fall, had no comment, according to the New York Daily News.

Why, that sounds delightful. But maybe Hilary Duff really is the thing that the new Beverly Hills 90210 needs – after all, hasn’t she always seemed destined to star in a show that looks dated within six weeks of filming and is only remembered by anyone so that non-Americans have a postcode to use when they want to access US-only stuff on the internet? Plus we shouldn’t forget that a big star like Hilary Duff will bring a huge audience to the show.

An audience of paedophiles, admittedly, but who’s counting?

Read more:

Report: Hilary Duff Offered Starring Role in ‘90210′ Remake – Fox

However, Beverly Hills 90210 shouldn't get used to holding that title, because a show that looks set to be even lamer has been announced – a modern-day Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off. 

That's right – the CW network is resurrecting Beverly Hills 90210, Frankenstein-style. However, the Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off doesn't have a cast or a writer yet – it only exists as an idea in the mind of a particularly evil television executive who we're hoping is quite tall. That way he'll be more likely to knock his head on a low ceiling beam and give himself some sweet sweet amnesia.

Spin-offs are never a particularly wonderful idea, as anyone with memories of Joey, Saved By The Bell: The College Years or the short-lived Knight Rider spin-off about KITT hilariously trying to raise an adorably ramshackle gang of endearingly dysfunctional multiracial adoptees will attest.

But worse than regular spin-offs are spin-offs from woefully vacuous 1990s shows about obscenely well-off la-di-da youngsters bimbling around Los Angeles in chinos and pikey stonewash denim jackets. But, despite our near-biblical warnings, some moron has decided to make a Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off anyway, as Reuters reports:

The CW network is developing a contemporary spinoff of Aaron Spelling's seminal 1990s teen soap "Beverly Hills, 90210," sources said. Details on the project — including which if any of the characters on the original series will make the transition to the spinoff — remain sketchy. The spinoff, which is close to getting a writer, has been put on the fast track by the network. It is expected to decide whether to order a pilot by the end of the month.

By the end of the month? These people are actually going to wait a full 19 days to give into the screaming in their heads and stabbing pain in their stomachs that they encounter when they even think of making a Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off?

Look, CW, we know it looks tempting. After all, none of the original Beverly Hills 90210 stars are doing much these days apart from crashing their cars and stealing other people's husbands, and giving employment to waifs and strays like them might make you feel good for a minute or two. But look at Melrose Place – that was a Beverly Hills 90210 spin-off so bad that the star might have sort of but not really tried to kill herself this week.

Do you want that on your conscience? Do you? Oh, what the hell, go and make the bloody show anyway – it's not like other networks are paying attention to the dangers of making awful spin-offs. Not only do we have the Family Guy Cleveland spin-off to look forward to this year, but Fox is also developing a spin-off from Prison Break set in an all-female prison. And if it thinks we're going to fall for the old 'lesbian jailbird' ruse again, well, it's sorely mistaken. Right boys?

Boys? Oh, for God's sake, pull your trousers back up boys. You're just embarrassing yourselves.

Read more: 

"90210" spinoff on fast track – Reuters