TV Line: "TV Shows That Changed Their Premise"

[JamesG.]

TV Shows That Changed Their Premise
Oct. 29, 2021


Happy Days

Happy Days followed a 1950s family as viewed through the eyes of Ron Howard’s wholesome Richie Cunningham going through various rites of passage.

By Season 2, the single-camera Garry Marshall comedy went broader with its humor and made Henry Winkler’s “The Fonz” a central character, even moving him into a room above the Cunninghams’ garage.






Family Matters

ABC’s Perfect Strangers spin-off focused on a middle-class African American family living in Chicago.

Not long after Jaleel White was brought in as next-door neighbor Steve Urkel, Family Matters became about anything but for the next eight seasons!






Ellen / These Friends of Mine

Debuting in 1994 as These Friends of Mine, this ABC sitcom starred stand-up comic Ellen DeGeneres as a bookstore employee with a number of quirky pals.

In Season 2, the title was changed to Ellen and two main cast members were dropped, including future Friends scene stealer Maggie Wheeler.

Then in Season 4, DeGeneres’ character came out as gay, and the show became less of an ensemble and more focused on Ellen’s life as a lesbian.






Scrubs

This medical comedy focused on John Dorian’s (Zach Braff) journey from naive med school grad to confident MD — and his various daydreams along the way.

After an eighth (and presumed final) season that ended with a planned series finale, ABC went and renewed Scrubs for Season 9. The show then shifted from a teaching hospital setting to med school.






Archer

H. Jon Benjamin voices Sterling Archer in this animated FX/FXX comedy, with the suave international spy leading his team on a series of James Bond-esque adventures peppered with off-color quips.

After six seasons of spycraft, Archer got creative in later seasons, moving the action to L.A. in Season 7 and making the title character a private detective.

From there he was film noir gumshoe, an alcoholic airplane pilot on a remote island, and the co-captain of a spaceship.






The Game

This Girlfriends spin-off followed Melanie (Tia Mowry-Hardrict), an aspiring doctor who turns down admission into a prestigious medical school to follow her pro-football boyfriend Derwin (Pooch Hall) to San Diego.

By Season 3, The Game evolved into a single-camera comedy that felt more like a half-hour drama. After The CW cancelled the series, BET picked it up for what would be Seasons 4 through 9, which featured divorces and reconciliations and steroid abuse.






Scream Queens

A college freshman infiltrates a mean-girl sorority to uncover the truth about what happened to her mother decades earlier. All of this is complicated by the arrival of a devil-masked serial killer mowing down unsuspecting students all over campus.

In the horror comedy’s second season, those same sorority sisters are now suddenly (and inexplicably) doctors at a local hospital, where yet another masked monster — possibly of supernatural origin, but who even knows — emerges with murderous intentions.






Cougar Town

Courteney Cox’s Jules Cobb was a single mother who, following a recent divorce, aimed to “make up for lost time” by dating younger men.

Not long into its freshman run, and as ABC research indicated that the title was turning away potential viewers, the show leaned into being an ensemble comedy about Jules, ex-husband Bobby, BFF Laurie and a group of wine-loving friends.






Kevin Can Wait

Kevin James played a newly retired police officer who, along with his (significantly) better half Donna (Erinn Hayes), was blindsided by twentysomething daughter Kendra’s decision to drop out of college to support her new fiancé, a nebbish app-developer named… Chale.

James’ former King of Queens costar Leah Remini guest-starred in the Season 1 finale as Kevin’s former police partner Vanessa, and was subsequently promoted to series regular for Season 2 after James killed off his on-screen wife.

They then opened a private security firm, and the series’ remaining episodes focused on their fledgling business.






Once Upon a Time

Season 1 of the ABC series followed Emma Swan’s introduction to Storybrooke, Maine — via Henry, the son she long ago placed for adoption — and her eventual acceptance that its residents were amnesic fairytale characters, and she herself was the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming!

After Emma found her “happy beginning” with Captain Hook — and in the wake several major cast exits — Season 7 was a “requel” (reboot/sequel) in which a new curse deposited Regina/The Evil Queen in Seattle, where as “Roni” she ran a pub.

In turn, Wish Hook (don’t ask) believed himself a police detective, partnered with Weaver (Rumple), while grown-up Henry pursued his own OTL with (a new) Cinderella.






Mom

At the time of its September 2013 debut, the multi-cam Chuck Lorre sitcom was by design about a mom-to-be (Sadie Calvano), her mom (Anna Faris), and her mom’s mom (Allison Janney).

Violet and her mom Christy had both gotten pregnant as teens (though the former wound up placing her child for adoption), while Christy and her mother Bonnie shared substance abuse problems and in fact reunited, following an estrangement, in AA.



The show shifted from being about Christy and Bonnie mending their relationship and Christy mending her relationship with Violet, to a show about Christy, Bonnie and the close knit group of women they met in AA.

Bonnie and her gal pals was the focus of what would be the sitcom’s farewell run.






B Positive

Thomas Middleditch’s Drew was a recently divorced therapist who needed a kidney transplant; Annaleigh Ashford’s Gina, a hard-partying woman from his past, decided to offer up her kidney on a whim. Season 1 thus focused on Drew and Gina as unlikely roommates, and Drew’s friendships with fellow dialysis patients.

Post-transplant, the focus shifted to Gina, who discovered that one of her favorite residents at the Valley Hills retirement home had died and left her $48 million. A complete overhaul followed in Season 2’s third episode, when Gina took over Valley Hills and the series introduced a new ensemble of characters.






Raven's Home

A spinoff of Disney Channel’s That’s So Raven, this show picked up more than a decade later with best friends Raven and Chelsea — now divorced single mothers — raising their children under the same roof in Chicago.

The comedy’s upcoming fifth season will relocate Raven (and just one of her twin children, for some reason!) to San Francisco, where she will care for her father after he has a health scare. Also not along for the ride? BFF Chelsea.

https://tvline.com/lists/tv-shows-th...e/ravens-home/

[rikraq]

Sleepy Hollow

Kind of did a reboot in the 4th season. Abbie was gone and Ichabod moved to Washington, DC.

[Moviefan2k4]

Dawson's Creek changed its storytelling fairly early, initially exploring the romance between wannabe filmmaker Dawson Leery (James van der Beek) and his longtime crush Joey Potter (Katie Holmes). But as the show went on, different loves came and went for both sides, until the final episode leapt forward a couple of years, and had Joey end up with local neighbor Pacey Witter (Joshua Jackson), ticking off lots of fans in the process.

[anomaly7]

Agents of SHIELD
I think this show would qualify. It was initially sold as a connection to the MCU films exploring the side of SHIELD agents that the films didn't explore.

As it went on, it moved away from any connection to the films with the exception of a few lines of dialogue here and there, to be it's own superhero/spy show.

[Moviefan2k4]

Originally Posted by anomaly7

Agents of SHIELD
I think this show would qualify. It was initially sold as a connection to the MCU films exploring the side of SHIELD agents that the films didn't explore.

As it went on, it moved away from any connection to the films with the exception of a few lines of dialogue here and there, to be it's own superhero/spy show.

Yeah, by the time of Season 4 they had pretty much ditched the MCU connections. By the end of the show's run, they didn't even reference Thanos or the Infinity Stones.

[Jay H.]

Anyone remember the old FOX sitcom Second Chance? It was one of their first shows. Anyway, it was originally about a guy who died and was sent back to Earth to help himself (as a teenager) be a better person. This angle was dumped, and the show became Boys Will Be Boys, a sitcom about the teenage boys and his friends.

[kevin87]

Originally Posted by Moviefan2k4

Yeah, by the time of Season 4 they had pretty much ditched the MCU connections. By the end of the show's run, they didn't even reference Thanos or the Infinity Stones.

To be fair, they were self-aware that they had jumped timelines and the last episode was them getting back in their original one, whether that was the MCU or not remains to be seen.

[kevin87]

Not sure if this counts since it wasn't an ordered series yet... but before Schooled as Schooled, ABC aired a special called The Goldbergs: 1990-Something which was intended to be a sort of backdoor pilot for a spinoff. 1990-Something followed some of the teachers from The Goldbergs in the 90s but mainly focused on Glascott, his sister (played by Nia Long) and two nieces including Felicia in the way that Adam was the main character of The Goldbergs (complete with Octavia Spencer narrating it as Felicia looking back on her life as a teenager). When ABC later picked the show and titled it Schooled, Nia Long had to leave due to being cast in another show and the show shifted focus, kept it in the 1990s and still involved the teachers but brought back Lainey Lewis as the main focus of the series.

[WonkaBedknobs83]

The Facts of Life (1979-1988)

Originally a Diff'rent Strokes spinoff about Charlotte Rae's Mrs. Garrett as a den mother to a bunch of boarding school girls, they pared the number of girls from seven to four, traded Molly Ringwald for Nancy McKeon and saw their ratings skyrocket, then after seven years Rae left and her good friend Cloris Leachman played her sister. Along the way the show became less about school, even when the older girls went to college, and more about the businesses Mrs. Garrett left Eastland Academy to run, and then the girls started to become the main focus.

Newhart (1982-1990)

Started out as a show about New Yorkers moving to Vermont and running an inn, then it became a crash course in media literacy as Bob Newhart's character of Dick Loudon became a TV show host whose producer dated his inn's maid.

All-American Girl (1994-1995)

A Margaret Cho sitcom about the first Asian-American TV sitcom family, but ABC and Touchstone, about to become one with the Disney merger, couldn't agree on the direction of the show so it lost momentum once they focused more on Margaret's relationship with her white friends than that with her family.