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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Why? Because new Beverly Hills 90210 makes a clean break from the past. It’s banished all the pastel sweaters and pouffy hair of the old Beverly Hills 90210 and brought in a brand new team of youngsters who underline just how completely brand new the brand new Beverly Hills 90210 is. It’s brand new, you know.

So who’s the biggest star of this super-new, bleeding-edge Beverly Hills 90210? Um, Shannen Doherty. Off the old Beverly Hills 90210. But it’s not all cripplingly pointless news, because now she’s famous again, Shannen Doherty gets to put the record straight about a fight she didn’t have with Jennie Garth more than a decade ago. Whew!

There are a few surprising things about the new series of Beverly Hills 90210. Firstly, the studio responsible has only decided to abbreviate its title down to 90210 rather than wrongly pander to its braindead young audience and call it something like Bevvaleee Hilz Nine Oh Too Won Piss.

Secondly, Shannen Doherty is back in it. Shannen Doherty, for crying out loud. Since leaving the original show in 1994 because everyone agreed that she was a stroppy little princess who crew and co-stars to peel her boiled eggs for her (or something), Shannen Doherty has been filling her wilderness years with one Kevin Smith film, about 30 seconds of Charmed, a car crash and the worst-sounding TV show in history.

But now Shannen Doherty is back, and she’s got a few scores to settle. Like, for instance, remember that time that Shannen Doherty and her Beverly Hills 90210 co-star Jennie Garth had a real-life fist-fight? No?

Actually us neither – we only have a finite amount of brainspace and we’d rather use it to remember what our relatives look like than to store information about violent incidents between two people from a 15-year-old TV show that we never even liked in the first place – but that’s not going to stop Shannen Doherty from banging on about it, is it?

No. You see, Shannen Doherty has decided to finally come forward and proclaim that the fist-fight between her and Jennie Garth never even happened. Shannen told Us Weekly:

“We never did,” Doherty, 37, tells Us. “I think I would remember Jennie’s fist connecting with a part of my body or a part of my face. It just goes to show you how people will lie.”

Great stuff. Breath a sigh of relief, everyone. Oh, you already are. What’s that? You’re not breathing a sigh of relief? That’s actually a sigh of disappointment and barely-concealed anger at Shannen Doherty, Us Weekly and hecklerspray for wasting your time with a story about something that didn’t even happen, even though if it did actually happen it wouldn’t have altered a single molecule of your life anyway?

Whoops.

Well, it would be if she actually did anything worthwhile ever, instead of just getting knocked up and kind of lingering around, like that person at a party you kind of know but don’t want to talk to but at the same time don’t want to ask to leave as that would be far too rude. Even though they’re standing there, people are staring and it’s killing the funtime vibe – you’re ruining the party, Tori Spelling. Get out.

Ahem.

It would seem that this is the exact attitude favoured by the execs behind the remake of Beverly Hills 90210 – imaginatively titled 90210 – who appear to have asked Tori to leave the TV party. Maybe it didn’t quite happen like that, but we’re trying to fit this in with quite a poorly-thought out and stretched analogy. Hush down.

Listen: Tori Spelling was on board for the new 90210, probably being all ‘like whoa’ and all deep and introspective (while being rich) when she was getting into character, but then she found out that her co-stars, Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth, were being paid around $50,000 per episode, whereas poor old Tori was only getting about $20,000 for each exciting adventure.

Unsurprisingly, little Miss Spelling reacted quite badly to the news, demanded equal pay and was turned down. Unsurprisinglyier, Tori then backed out of the show, leaving 90210 again without Donna Martin - just as it was in the 90s when she ended her run on the show after numerous spats with the cast and crew. Old habits, and all that.

Fortunately, there is more than enough for Tori Spelling to fall back on – she has… hmm… this one’s a toughie… well, she has a kid to look after… and… hmm… nope – that’s about it, really. She could write another book, or sell more of her stuff or something, but she doesn’t really seem to have that much else going for her right now.

While she may have had a point in expecting wage equality with her guest appearances on the new 90210, hecklerspray didn’t really know what to think about it all. Then we were pointed in the direction of one of those ‘quote’ things where someone said some words about it, and it told us what to think. The source told Deadline Hollywood Daily:

“She thought she deserved parity, and she’s got a point.”

Which is the kind of statement you don’t really want to argue with – straightforward, no fluff, gets the point across: some textbook quoteage. Well done that ’source’.

Alas – even with the crippling loss of Tori Spelling, it looks as if the producers intend to actually go ahead with 90210. How they could dare we do not know, but the premiere of the show is set to air on September 2nd. We will be watching, probably crying and definitely laughing at how bad it’s sure to be.

Not that we’re negative or anything.

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.