It’s no small task, rebooting The Twilight Zone. Yes, it’s been attempted before — to varying degrees of success. But unlike many other pop-culture classics that have been retooled over the years with new actors, new writers, new characters, and all the rest, efforts to relaunch The Twilight Zone have always lacked one key ingredient: the original show’s creator and host, Rod Serling.
So intrinsically tied to the show was Serling that other programs bearing the Twilight Zone name have never quite felt authentic, even when they were good productions in their own right. Without Serling’s presence — he died back in 1975 at the too young age of 50 — the question became one of what makes a project The Twilight Zone rather than just another anthology genre series?
Source: IGN.com The Twilight Zone Series Premiere Review