5 Sitcom Spin-Offs That Outlasted the Original
They don’t make ‘em like Love American Style anymore, the ‘70s anthology show that featured out-of-work stars in one-off stories based on the theme of romance. The comedy lasted five seasons but didn’t make much of an impact — unless you count the episode, “Love and the Television Set.” Teenage Ronny Howard, known to viewers as The Andy Griffith Show’s Opie, played a ‘50s kid looking for love. That half-hour episode became the de facto pilot for Happy Days, a show whose 11 seasons more than doubled the run of Love, American Style.
Here are five more sitcoms that began life on another show and outlasted the original…
Frasier
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Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier Crane seemed an unlikely candidate to lead a spin-off from Cheers. Weren’t Woody and Norm funnier characters? How about Carla and her weird family? (They kinda, sorta did that one with the short-lived Tortellis.) But Frasier, with a completely different cast and tone from Cheers, proved a worthy successor. Both classic sitcoms lasted 11 seasons, with Cheers’ 275 episodes actually topping Frasier’s 264. But the later show’s reboot in 2023 has officially pushed the spin-off beyond the original.
The Jeffersons
You know you’re movin’ on up when you can get away from the bigoted Archie Bunker and settle down in a deluxe apartment in the sky. Weezy and George Jefferson started as the Bunkers’ neighbors on All in the Family before Norman Lear saw sitcom gold in a show about an upwardly mobile Black family. Like Frasier and Cheers, The Jeffersons lasted 11 seasons to All in the Family’s nine. It was also the longest-lasting of All in the Family’s offspring, which included Maude, Archie Bunker’s Place, Gloria and 704 Hauser.
The Facts of Life
Charlotte Rae was the thread that tied the boarding-school sitcom Facts of Life to its predecessor Diff’frent Strokes, on which she played the Drummonds’ housekeeper. Edna Garrett, housemother and dietician, led Tootie and her friends through puberty and into young adulthood over the course of nine seasons. Diff’rent Strokes only lasted eight, maybe because its young actors proved more troubled than the ladies at Eastland School.
A popular 2021 Facts of Life special led to talk of a reboot, but Mindy “Natalie” Cohn revealed that one of the original cast members was holding out for big bucks, rendering the new version “very dead.” (Can we all agree it was Blair?)
Family Matters
In what world was Family Matters ever connected to the immigrant-cousin comedy Perfect Strangers? Harriette Winslow was the elevator operator in the building where Cousin Larry and Cousin Balki worked, of course. She became the matriarch of the family in Family Matters before her show was hijacked by Urkel. It was a good thing he did — the quirky character’s popularity helped the sitcom last nine seasons, one more than Perfect Strangers’ eight.
The Simpsons
I’ll put my money down now — no spin-off will ever last longer than The Simpsons’ 36 seasons and counting. The cartoon classic certainly outlived the four seasons of The Tracey Ullman Show, the variety series on which Matt Groening’s animated shorts got their start. No hard feelings, right, Tracey?
It turns out she disliked Simpsons videos right from the start because “she didn’t think they were the quality of her show.” That didn’t stop Ullman from suing The Simpsons producers for a percentage of merchandising profits once the spin-off became a huge hit. A court spent less than five hours deciding Ullman had nothing to do with The Simpsons success and she got zilch. “I’m not bitter because Bart Simpson makes more money than me,” she claimed.