Emerald City, and Darkness Falling

Emerald City is a TV series that ran for one season before being cancelled. Its premise was a darker, grittier vision of the Wizard of Oz mythos – something like Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, but turned up even further. The original Wizard of Oz books and movies had much less heavy themes and a much less grim worldview, so why were these changes made? Are they merely trying to piggyback on the popularity of Game of Thrones, or is this more related to the shift in cultural expectations over the past twenty years? Or perhaps there is a deeper reason? The essay could speculate on what such changes add to the Oz mythos or tell us about it, and could also branch off into similar evolutions seen in other series, perhaps even in other genres like video games.