THE producers of Will & Grace have now announced their plans for the much-hyped revival of their long-running NBC series.

The reaction has been, for the most part, bewilderment.

In 2006, the sitcom, about a nervous gay lawyer (Eric McCormack) and his high-strung best friend/roommate (Debra Messing), aired a two-hour series finale that moved the action 20 years into the future — where the characters, after a period of estrangement, reunited and reconciled while helping their respective children, Ben and Laila, move into the same college dorms.

Corny? Yes, but the fans who stuck with the show through 194 episodes were really into it.

The episode pulled in over 18 million viewers.

Well, that was then and this is now. And the now of Will & Grace completely ignores the then, since series creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick announced that the finale has been tossed out. Just like that.

Premiering in late September, the revival is set in 2017. There are no children, there are no college dorms and the spouses (Bobby Cannavale and Harry Connick Jr.) attached to the show’s original storylines have been chucked as well.

In order to get Will and Grace back into their old apartment — for the ensuing neurotic high jinks — the slate has been wiped clean. Maybe because, as McCormack said, “Happy endings aren’t really funny.”

But they shouldn’t totally ignore the past, either. What’s the point of short-changing your audience? The risky decision raises some interesting questions.

Will fans accept the characters, one a successful lawyer and the other a successful interior designer, as middle-aged Manhattan roommates? Unless Will has spent some time in Bellevue following a nervous breakdown, why would he live with Grace again? Even on a good day, she was a lot of work — and Will already had a job. Whom would he invoice for all those billable hours?

Taking the show’s original quartet, which includes Karen (Megan Mullally) and Jack (Sean Hayes), into their middle years is also going to require a huge leap of faith on the audience’s part.

The actors aren’t old enough yet to do that Grace & Frankie/Golden Girls aren’t-senior-citizens-wacky? schtick yet, so the warning bell — the one that says “You can’t go home again” — is already sounding.

To make matters worse, NBC, without having aired a single episode, has overconfidently renewed the series for a second season of 12 episodes. Even if the show sucks, we’re stuck with it.

Erasing the past on Will & Grace is just one example of a story run amok — but the creative masterminds on the revival of ABC’s Roseanne, expected to be a 2018 mid-season replacement, have pulled a real whopper.

They seem to have forgotten that on the original series, which ran from 1988 to 1997, one of the main characters — Dan Conner, played by John Goodman — DIED. Of a heart attack. He didn’t run off and join the circus or the cult of Iron John — he passed from this life on earth.

Bringing him back 20 years later is not only ridiculous, it also insults the intelligence of the audience who stuck with the sitcom through 222 episodes.

Why would they accept that? Perhaps between now and then cooler heads will prevail and Roseanne will die quietly (or Goodman will only appear in flashbacks).

Both of these revivals unfortunately bolster the argument that much of the writing on network TV is disposable.

In a medium already challenged by audience erosion due to competition from cable and streaming services, it smacks of desperation to resurrect these old properties. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Just ask the geniuses who launched the failed reboots of Kojak (2005), Charlie’s Angels (2011) and Ironside (2013).

The Will & Grace revival will be available in Australia on September 29 via the streaming service Stan.

This article originally appeared on The New York Post and has been republished here with permission.