It's not so much the WB that I'm wary of, it's DC. What worked in the 60s is not going to work now. I think the series will have a fighting chance if they do not choose to retell the girl on the train and the Josette/Barnabas tale yet again. It's not that neither weren't enormously important to the series, it's just that he's reheating left-overs for the umpteenth time and it really doesn't work for me.
You said it.
I sort of agree. But at the same time, as a few people have said in the past few years and as one of the comments I'd quoted from back in 1990 said "we must realize Dan Curtis is not recreating DS for us, but for the public at large, and their reaction to it will trigger everything that follows."
If this series does get a go, I don't relish sitting through the umpteenth variation of the introduction of Barnabas, the arrival of Vicki, or the whole Barnabas/Josette/Angelique backstory. But I do beleive that story needs to be told for anyone unfamiliar with it to understand what comes afterward. So, I'd be willing to sit through it all all over again so long as something newer comes along afterward.
The NBC series was planning to take the story in a different direction from what the daytime series did after Vicki's return from the past. Unfortunately, though, Warren Littlefield decided to pull the plug rather than allow them the opportunity. (Though if it's any consolation, that is a decision he came to regret. But it was a case of too little too late...)