TV Shows That Became A Different Show From How They Began

In reading posts on here and also in my observations, dramas seem to go every which way after a while. Sitcoms, for some reason, often become yelling fests with dumbed down characters. All In The Family, Barney Miller and even Magnum P.I. This is after rewatching in recent years. With Magnum, he starts to rant and yell at Higgins so often it's irritating. Barney's annoyed by incompetence and Archie just got more crabby. Oh and Family Ties. For some reason the dad went from an intellectual to an almost Clark Griswold character. Then there's Skippy...don't get me started.

 

Naked City. The first season it was a half hour show that was more of a straight ahead cops and robbers show. Starting in the second season, it was an hour show with only one original cast member and became more of a drama.

 

Resurrection started out as a warm hearted show about a family's son returning from the dead but morphed into horror.

 

MARY TYLER MOORE was somewhat different at the end than it was in the beginning, mostly due to cast changes. Rhoda and Phyllis, mainstays of the early days were long gone, replaced by Suzanne and Georgette. Mary had a different apartment that was rather bland in comparison to the earlier apartment, which was almost a character in itself. But for the most part, the writing stayed sharp, with only a few missteps.

By the way, DECADES will be airing MARY TYLER MOORE this weekend on the Binge in honor of Ed Asner. MeTV will have a few episodes on Sunday.

 

The short lived 1984 NBC comedy Spencer was about the title character, a teenager played by Chad Lowe. Lowe quit the show after a few episodes and the part was recast and the show was renamed Under One Roof and became more of a family sitcom.

Early 2000s syndicated show, She Spies, started out as a over the top, action comedy that broke the fourth wall and was pretty meta. Over the course of the first season, the humor was toned down. For the second season, they changed the cast up a bit and turned it into a more serious show.

The first season of the 60s Spider-Man Saturday morning cartoon had two stories per episodes and many of them featured villains from the comic. During the second season, the budget was notably cut. Episodes for both the second and third/final season only featured one story and the comic villains were rarely used. The tone and look became darker (and kind of psychedelic) and the show relied a lot more on stock footage, mainly footage of Spider-Man swinging, but they did include footage from another show from the same company, Rocket Robin Hood.

 

Also don't forget for a brief period between 1961 and 1963 it switched to a half hour sitcom anthology format:


Fawlty Towers' fan's will recognize Allan Cuthbertson from 'Gourmet Night', Frank Thornton from Are You Being Served? and Last of the Summer Wine (and also Benny's radio programme) and that the signature tune for the final 1963 series was composed by Ron Grainer (Doctor Who Theme artist).

 

That's right! He only agreed to the BBC's demands to "go sitcom" (in 1961, they were convinced the variety show format was dying) on the proviso he be allowed to do it as an "anthology" format, i.e. a different set of characters and situations each week. His doing very limited shows per series (6, with his second series consisting of 7 shows) prefigured the way John Cleese would go in Fawlty Towers. One episode of the last Hill sitcom anthology series (of late 1963), "The Taxidermist," had a bit involving a parrot that, while different in every detail, seemed to anticipate Monty Python's "dead parrot" sketch.

After Mr. Hill returned to the variety format in 1964-65, it would appear the structure of his show was modeled after American comedian Jackie Gleason's American Scene Magazine (an episode of which aired on BBC2 in 1964 due to its having taken the Bronze Rose in the recent Golden Rose of Montreux festival - I wouldn't be surprised if Hill actually saw that particular show). One aspect of his 1965-68 shows was that different cast members - especially women (starting with whichever foil of the era, whether Patricia Hayes or June Whitfield, then going on to other women including, on one 1965 show, Rosemarie Dunham, years before co-starring with Michael Caine in Get Carter) - would sit behind a desk to introduce the setup for a coming sketch. This part of his shows seems to have been lifted from Gleason having the likes of Barbara Heller (as "Christine Clam") introducing sketches from behind a desk. The 1963-64 season of Gleason's show had a pacing that Hill seems to have lifted wholesale - short blackouts interspersed with regular sketches and musical guests. (Only Gleason, unlike Hill, didn't do any location shooting, his shows were all done studio-bound, but in 1963-64 there were two recording sessions for each show - one for little bits, the other for the actual show.)

As a side note, that Benny had women actually introduce sketches was but one factor in how, pre-Hill's Angels, he was actually a bit more progressive and forward-thinking in that vein than the "But that's my only line!" aspect of early Python, let alone some other shows like Morecambe & Wise. I also think of one of his very early Thames shows where the opening "Ladies and gentlemen, it's The Benny Hill Show . . . " was not only handled by a woman, but that she was seen onscreen doing so.

 

The gorgeous Nicole Shelby on the 7th February 1970 show (which was actually done second, before the previously aired show, going by the VTR numbers, this one being VTR 2307 and the Xmas 69 one being 2308!)

Picture from the introduction:


And a nice photo with Benny:

 

Yep . . .

I was also thinking of some 1973 sketches where there was an unseen female voice as director or whatever, notably the "Batman" sketch at the start of:

And in the open of the "Phone-In With Ludovic Kennedy" from the prior show ("Okay, Ludo . . . stand by, Ludo . . . ") where Benny played doddering, often incoherent Minister of Food Humphrey Bumphrey (and Henry McGee was the famed broadcaster).

 

I came across this thread just today and have been skimming it. I have to say, this is a program I've never heard of before today. (On the other hand, I never saw even part of a single episode of Seinfeld, so go figure.)

 

Again, I'm coming to this thread very late, but I'll contribute this story.

Years a go when my daughter was maybe four or five, we were getting ready to go somewhere and she protested that we couldn't leave yet because she was watching Gilligin's Island and she thought that might be the episode where they finally get off the island. I had to laugh and told her it was a very old show from when I was a kid and they never get off the island. (I think in many ways, that incident ruined her childhood - at least, she became much more cynical.)

 

The first couple of months of Revenge were great, with Emily getting even with someone else each week. After that, it kind of went off the rails and became a different show.

 

It's not the best thing ever, but it's pretty fun. Ends up focusing on the two main characters and their AA friends and experiences after a couple of seasons. It's just crazy how it started being about a divorced mother in AA dealing with her ex-husband, previously estranged mother, kids, and job, only to end up being just about her mother and former AA friends (and before Anna Faris left, the kids and even ex-husband were already ancient history).

 

The dangers of letting Alison Janney "guest" on your show. I loved Mom but they stopped showing it on free to air in the UK after the third season (I think). I'd love to catch up with it.

 

Six Feet Under with the whole 'who killed Lisa' story arc in season 4.

 

It's certainly a very different role to the one she played on "Masters of Sex".

 

They did eventually get off the island in the TV movie Escape From Gilligan's Island.

Spoiler

The movie ends with The Castaways having another shipwreck and ending back on the same island.

 

Dynasty started out fairly serious, enter Joan Collins and it became the glitzy catfight campfest we know and love it for today

 

Agreed. I bought the seasons on DVD awhile back and decided to stop after season 6. Once Reinhold Weege walked away, the show was running on fumes, especially after hooking Harry and Christine up just because of the idea that every sitcom needed a Sam and Diane

 

The one thing I disliked about the creators saying that it was about a time and place when Sex And The City showed you could revisit a group of friends 20 years later after marriage and kids and they can still have some of the same friends. Miranda and Charlotte were both married and moms by the end of the series in 2004 yet we can still revisit them in 2022 and they're still friends with Carrie and still living their lives

 

Facts Of Life went through several metamorphoses. Starting out as "Mrs Garrett from Diff'rent Strokes becomes a housemother", ratings were low and they dropped half the cast while adding Nancy McKeon as Jo, the show became a hit. In the 1982-83 season Jo and Blair were seniors and there was talk about spinning them off to a college years show, but instead after they graduated Eastland, took the show into a different location predominantly set at Edna's Edinles, a Mrs Garrett store where the four girls worked for her. Natalie and Tootie were still.at Eastland but it was unseen. Then Edna's Edibles burned down and became Over Our Heads, then Mrs. G left and by the end it was about four adult women in their early 20s who were roommates

 

I think by the last season Mrs. Garrett left completely and they added Cloris Leachman and a kid to the mix. Forgot all about that.

 

They ended the series with Blair buying Eastland and making it co-ed with the hopes of a spinoff (with young Mayim Bialik, Seth Green and Juliette Lewis) but NBC passed

 

Yes but had to make that turn when that was the world Walt and Jesse were playing in.

 

No, he didn't. He could have continued to live a more interesting double life. And Walt was still dying, just not as quickly.