All in the Family - which has had more spin offs than any other TV show.
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| All in the Family - Archie, Edith, daughter Gloria, and her hubby Mike. |
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| The Jeffersons - the Bunkers' neighbors spun off to their own show when they moved on up to a swanky apartment in their show. |
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| Maude - Edith's liberal cousin got her own show after sparring with Archie a few times on the original show. |
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| Gloria - Archie and Edith's daughter left Mike and moved West - working for crusty vet Burgess Meredith while raising son Joey - in a one season flop. |
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| The original series spun off into a sequel series that centered around Archie buying his favorite bar and running it. |
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| 704 Hauser - In the strangest spin off - twenty years after the original show premiered, they tried a new show set in the house Archie and Edith had lived in, now with an African American family moving in - and father John Amos was nearly as short sighted as Archie was. This one didn't last long. |
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
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| The Mary Tyler Moore Show - Mary and her friends and co-workers and her life in Minneapolis. |
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| Rhoda - Mary's best friend moved away to her own show that ran for years. |
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| Phyllis - Mary's other pal also moved into a show of her own - but this one did not last very long. |
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| Lou Grant - in the strangest spin off here, Mary's boss graduated from the original sitcom into an hour long drama series that had him running a news bureau in a different city. This one also did very well, running for several seasons. |
Happy Days
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| Happy Days - an early cast shot. |
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| Laverne and Shirley - the girls dated Fonzie and Richie a couple of times, then got their own show that ran eight seasons. |
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| Mork and Mindy - a weird spinoff in that Happy Days introduced an alien character who then time traveled to the then modern day for the series. |
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| They broke the young lovers off to their own show but it didn't last long and they hightailed it back to Happy Days and finished out the run. |
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| Out of the Blue - Here's the winner for weirdest spinoff for this show - another fantasy concept started on the otherwise sorta realistic Happy Days about an angel - who then also showed up in the then modern day for a brief run on his own series. |
M*A*S*H*
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| M*A*S*H* - not the original cast, but the longest running lineup in the Korean War series. |
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| AfterM*A*S*H* - Three characters spun off to a two season run working in a veteran's hospital after the war. |
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| W*A*L*T*E*R* - A few years later, they tried to get a show out of Radar becoming a police officer back home. They only got the pilot made, but that still counts... |
Cheers
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| Cheers - where everybody knows your name. |
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| The Tortellis - Carla's ex-husband and his new family got their own show for a little while. |
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| Frasier - when Cheers ended, the crew continued working on a spinoff about Frasier and his life in Seattle with his friends and family. The two shows ran a total of twenty years (!). |
Three’s Company
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| Three's Company - the roommates and their landlords. |
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| The Ropers - the landlords spun off to their own short lived show. |
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| Three's a Crowd - after the original series ended, Jack and his girlfriend spun off to another series with the great Robert Mandan. |
The Andy Griffith Show
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| The Andy Griffith Show - there were more cast members, but here you get four. |
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| Gomer Pyle USMC - they sent goofy Gomer off to the Marines where he annoyed Sergeant Carter for several seasons. |
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| Mayberry RFD - When Andy Griffith was ready to pack it in - they decided to continue the show - spinning off with the supporting characters of the last couple of seasons carrying on for a few more. |
The Dukes of Hazzard
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| The Dukes of Hazzard - All of the stars and the car. |
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| Enos - they sent the deputy off to his own show as he went to work as a big city detective. It didn't last and Enos returned to the original show for the rest of the run. |
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| The Dukes - they got two Saturday morning seasons out of a worldwide car race between the Dukes and Boss Hogg and Rosco - with all of the original voices. |
Dragnet
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| The detectives on the case, and looking for "just the facts." |
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| Adam-12 - the spinoff followed the adventures of uniform officers Malloy and Reed - with the late great Martin Milner and Kent McCord starring. |
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| Emergency! - and the other spinoff focused on the paramedic side of things. |
The Golden Girls
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| The Golden Girls - the ladies looking their best. |
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| Empty Nest - the ladies' neighbor got his own show and they crossed over occasionally. |
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| The Golden Palace - After the original show ended on NBC, three of the ladies moved to CBS for another season as they ran a hotel with Cheech Marin as the hotel's chef. |
Until next post, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!
Brilliant list!
ReplyDeleteA lot of the spin offs I watched and enjoyed. Some of them I liked better than the original series. My dad loved All in the Family. I was more of a Jeffersons fan. Using their address to show a new family, African-American, living in the Bunker place is a clever idea. Pity it didn't live up to its potential.
Again, my parents loved Happy Days. I was more Mork and Mindy. And Out of the Blue? Never heard of it. Straaange idea. You wonder how some of these things get made.
I knew Fraiser had a long run. But I never thought about Kelsey Grammar playing the same character for 20 years. Wonder if that's a record (not counting animated shows--I know The Simpsons has had a long run)?
Loved Norman Fell. Couldn't really get into the Ropers. Wish they'd moved back to harass Jack and the girls. I wasn't a Ralph Furley fan.
I had no idea Adam-12 and Emergency! were Dragnet spin offs! Also, a ! looks strange mid-sentence. We liked Golden Girls and Empty Nest. Okay, I mostly liked Kristy McNichol. I'd never heard of Golden Palace. Wonder what it was like?
Thanks for the excellent TenList. As walks down memory lane go, this one shed light on some new paths--and it was very cool!
Thank you sir! I watched a fair amount of a fair number of these shows. Kelsey Grammer actually ties with another iconic actor for the longest live action run as a single character. - James Arness as Matt Dillon - another 20 year run. One of the late night shows at the time brought Grammer on to celebrate the accomplishment - and they reached out to Arness, who was still alive and kicking - to see if he'd come share in the fun. Apparently, Mr. Arness took great pride in holding that record and wasn't happy he now had to share it - because he apparently told them no in a very terse way.
ReplyDeleteI never heard of some of these - The Tortellis ?? Gloria ?? Pretty amazing that back in the day of three stations you could still be unaware of these.
ReplyDeleteWell, I now know of shows I never saw a frame of - and I think a big factor in that was that you had set shows you watched at set times - and in some cases in the days before remote controls - you wouldn't channel surf and would leave the TV on that station for hours - so you never had a chance to see things on the other two networks.
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