Peacock’s Most Popular Show Is Getting A Major Netflix Reboot

One show on Peacock had over 13 billion minutes of view time in 2024 — despite the fact that it’s been around since 1974. Believe it or not, the title of most-watched Peacock show belongs to none other than Little House on the Prairie.

This charming, beloved set of eight books by Laura Ingalls Wilder gained a TV adaptation in the mid-1970s (Wilder’s books first began releasing in the 1930s, and covered her childhood in the late 1800s). 

The book series follows Wilder’s entire childhood with her family growing up and moving around the U.S. as settlers. Nearly every book is set in a brand new location, as her family frequently moved to purchase new land and pioneer the frontier. 

The original TV series begins around the fourth book in Wilder’s series, when she was around 8 years old. The show spanned for a full nine seasons, capturing the hearts of viewers everywhere just as Wilder’s original books did. 

Now, fifty years after its release, Little House on the Prairie still holds the crown for Peacock. It’s not too surprising that this meant other streaming service giants wanted to pick up the series for itself; and Netflix decided to do so in a much more original way.

Rather than negotiate for the rights to have the original Little House on the Prairie series on Netflix, the company decided to make its very own 2024 reboot inspired by the original TV show. This will bring a high-quality, modern TV update to an old favorite.

The plan is to create a family drama series that follows the stories in the original Little House on the Prairie books, complete with a frontier-style exploration that rivals the likes of other Netflix Westerns that have gained popularity in recent years.

Because the Netflix series is a reboot — rather than picking up where the original TV series left off — it’s likely that we’ll see a complete retelling of Wilder’s tales, though there’s no saying yet exactly where they’ll pick up. The original Little House on the Prairie TV show chose to begin the series during the fourth book because it takes place at an age where Wilder and her sister have more interaction with other characters, and also have more adventures on the Western frontier. 

The first book, Little House in the Big Woods, begins when Wilder is just four years old, which makes it slightly less likely that we’ll see an adaptation begin during the first book. However, there’s certainly plenty of room for narrative setups and flashbacks to occur regarding events from the first book. Netflix has a lot of materials to work with, and fans are excited to see which stories of Wilder’s they’ll choose to tell — and how they plan on making the adaptation different from the original series.

There’s no set release date for the new Little House on the Prairie just yet, but it has been confirmed to be in development.