The success of a TV show means there's only one logical result: More of it. But when greenlighting yet another season doesn't feel enough, or perhaps a show has run its course but fans yearn for more, that's when there's the call for a spin-off. But some spin-offs are a little weirder than others.
Today, the explosion of TV across different streaming platforms and the need for familiar brands and "IP" has made spin-offs more commonplace than it's ever been. But while some spin-offs feel logical, usually centered around popular side characters, some spin-offs hinge on a strange premise, or barely have a connection to the original show at all. Some spin-offs just sound weird on paper no matter which way you slice it.
32. The Hills: New Beginnings
On paper, a continuation of the hit MTV reality show The Hills – itself a spin-off of Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County – sounds like catnip for nostalgic aging millennials. Where The Hills chronicled the young adulthood of Laguna Beach High School alums as they braved their early 20s, The Hills: New Beginnings aimed to resume their lives almost 10 years later to see their 30s. But without the presence of original star Lauren Conrad and a pandemic-delayed Season 2, which aired to low ratings, there wasn't much of a horizon beyond The Hills.
31. The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.
With the success of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which seized on the spy-fi craze of the mid-'60s, it was inevitable that a spin-off was attempted. Indeed, one aired in the form of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., which premiered in 1966 and lasted for just one season. The show's premise did little beyond the title: The show followed another agent of U.N.C.L.E., April Dancer (Stefanie Powers) who is paired with a male British agent (Noel Harrison). (One might see The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. as an American attempt at a British hit like The Avengers.) Despite the show's producers aiming to create a shared universe with crossovers, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. failed to generate a big enough audience and was canceled after one season.
30. Masked Rider
Music mogul turned television tycoon Haim Saban saw great success adapting Toei's Super Sentai series from Japan into the hit known as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Hoping lightning could strike twice, Saban secured the adaptation rights for Toei's other superhero show Kamen Rider and launched an Americanized reboot, Masked Rider. The Season 3 premiere of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers served as a backdoor pilot for Masked Rider, which saw the Power Rangers meet Masked Rider (T.J. Roberts) on his home planet Edenoi. Weeks later on the Fox Kids network, Masked Rider premiered, though the show abandoned any continuity with Power Rangers. The show ultimately lasted two seasons, totaling 40 episodes.
29. Once Upon a Time in Wonderland
The Disney/ABC hit series Once Upon a Time was a strange show in its own right, being a live-action drama where the characters and stories from fairy tales (and mostly the popular Disney iterations) all live in the real world, with all memories of their magical pasts wiped out. It was "Disney's Lost," to put it crudely. In 2013, the success of the show led to a short-lived spin-off Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, which applied the same premise towards Lewis Carroll's works. Notably, the show maintained a dark vibe that flirted with psychological thrillers, but the unique approach wasn't enough to give Wonderland more than one season.
28. CSI: Cyber
When the procedural juggernaut CSI called it quits in 2015, it left the door open for a new team to take over: CSI: Cyber. Unlike other CSI spin-offs that were localized to cities and conducted investigations through forensic science, CSI: Cyber took its brand of justice over the world wide web with cyber investigations. The show centered on the FBI's Cyber Crime Division, with agents in D.C. focusing their attention on virtual crimes like identity theft, hacking, revenge porn, and social media. While CSI: Cyber sounds like it should have aired in 1999 rather than 2015, the world had only become more interconnected, which should have made the series the next big network hit. But the show only lasted two seasons, the shortest run in all of the CSI franchise.
27. Crusade
Predating the widespread serialization of modern TV and other sci-fi hits like Battlestar Galactica and Lost was Babylon 5, the cult sci-fi drama from creator J. Michael Straczynski about a gigantic spaceship that served as neutral territory for interstellar planets and species. In a time when television was still episodic, Babylon 5 unfolded like a serialized novel with episodes maintaining airtight continuity that required weekly attention. After Babylon 5 ended, Straczynski aimed to tell a new five-season story in Crusade, a sequel set aboard a new ship with a new crew on a new mission: To stop a plague from ravaging Earth. But conflicts with the network TNT led to its early cancellation, with only 13 episodes total making it to air.
26. Baywatch Nights
What if lifeguards… became paranormal investigators? That's not how Baywatch Nights started out, but it's what it ultimately became by the end of its short two seasons. A spin-off of the hit Baywatch, Baywatch Nights premiered in 1995 as a procedural mystery where a handful of the Baywatch lifeguards – including David Hasselhoff's Mitch Buchannon – open a detective agency with a rented office above a Miami nightclub. When ratings began slipping after the first season, the show took inspiration from the wildly successful The X-Files and introduced paranormal and sci-fi storylines for Season 2. Because aliens aren't what anyone watches Baywatch for, the efforts didn't pan out. Baywatch Nights finally hit the showers in May 1997.
25. The Finder
Bones was a big show, a mighty late 2000s police procedural with over 240 episodes across 12 seasons. Such wide breadth gave creator Hart Hanson cache for a spin–off, The Finder, which also functioned as a loose adaptation of Richard Greener's novel series The Locator. Stemming from a backdoor pilot in Bones' sixth season, The Finder followed a U.S. Army veteran (Geoff Stults) whose injuries in the Iraq War rendered him paranoid, along with the strange ability to find anything. Such a talent has made him popular with a rich clientele, who are willing to pay top dollar to have their lost things secured. The Finder had all the ingredients for a hit network procedural that should have lasted multiple seasons, but the show couldn't quite, ahem, locate a dedicated audience to see it through. Only 13 episodes of The Finder ever made it to air.
24. The Golden Palace
The Golden Girls was a hit during its run on NBC, which saw fit for a sequel spin-off in the form of The Golden Palace. Picking up where the predecessor left off, three of the original characters – played by Betty White, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty – move into a Miami hotel they acquire with pooled earnings, only to find it in a sorry state with only two employees (played by Cheech Martin and Don Cheadle). While The Golden Palace had a short-term reservation, ending with a single season of 24 episodes, the show has a dedicated audience within the existing Golden Girls fandom. During the Black Lives Matters protests of 2020, an episode that directly addressed racism and the Confederate Flag went viral online.
23. The Muppets
Muppet purists may not vibe with The Muppets, but you have to give it credit for trying something new (even if it was derivative). Taking several pages out of 30 Rock, Modern Family, and The Office, The Muppets sees all the familiar felt faces – most of all Kermit the Frog – as they try to maintain their personal and professional lives as they work behind the scenes of Miss Piggy's late-night talk show in Los Angeles. Stylistically, The Muppets is nothing more than "The Office with Muppets," being a single-cam sitcom with a "documentary crew" following them around. But what else could a contemporary version of The Muppet Show be?
22. Young Hercules
Before Ryan Gosling was a Hollywood heartthrob, he was a teen sensation who flexed his lean muscles on Young Hercules. A tween-oriented prequel to the Kevin Sorbo-led Hercules: The Legendary Journeys – which launched the infinitely more popular Xena: Warrior Princess – Young Hercules sees Gosling as the adolescent-age Greek hero during Hercules' schoolboy years at Cheiron's Academy. Young Hercules isn't all that strange, per se, it's just funny to see Gosling with a '90s boy band haircut. Fun fact: Before starring in Young Hercules, Gosling also had a minor guest role as another character in an episode of Sorbo's Hercules.
21. Tabitha
With just a flick of her nose, Elizabeth Montgomery enchanted audiences everywhere as beautiful witch Samantha in the hit sitcom Bewitched. Years after it ended in 1972, there came Tabitha in 1977, which had a considerably shorter run of only 11 episodes. The short-lived spin-off centered around Samantha's now-grown daughter Tabitha (played by Lisa Hartman) as she works as a production assistant at a Los Angeles TV station. (Don't think too hard over how she aged so much in less than 10 years.) While Tabitha is in many ways a spiritual reboot of its predecessor, Tabitha was her own woman with her own challenges making her way through a whole new decade.
20. The Blacklist: Redemption
Amid the roaring success of NBC's The Blacklist, a little-known spin-off made it to air in February 2017 centered around Famke Janssen's Blacklist character Susan Hargrave. In The Blacklist: Redemption, Susan runs a covert mercenary group with her son, an agent named Tom Keen (Ryan Eggold). Despite its connections to the wildly popular The Blacklist, its vanilla premise doomed this spin-off from capturing the same amount of attention as its originator. (Even many die-hard fans of The Blacklist might admit they've never heard of Redemption.) The show lasted just 8 episodes, ending in April 2017.
19. How I Met Your Father
It's not that weird How I Met Your Mother saw a semi-connected sequel spin-off. What's weirder is what it almost was: When the show ended in 2014, there was swift work on a spin-off titled How I Met Your Dad, which starred eventual Barbie director Greta Gerwig. The pilot was rejected, but years later in 2022 Hulu released How I Met Your Father, also from series creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. Ex-Disney queen Hilary Duff stars as Sophie, who recalls to her children in the future how she met their father. (Kim Cattrall appears on camera as an older Sophie in the year 2050.) While How I Met Your Father was essentially a reboot for a new era of TV, the show still drew a big enough audience on streaming. But in 2023, Hulu opted to cancel the show for reasons that are still unclear.
18. Marvel's Agent Carter
At the height of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the fan-favorite heroine Peggy Carter, played by Hayley Atwell, got to enjoy her own spotlight in the short-lived but stylish period espionage series Agent Carter. Atwell reprises her role as Peggy from the Captain America films, who takes on strange cases for the Strategic Scientific Reserve in postwar New York. (In Season 2, the show relocated to sunny Los Angeles.) Despite popularity among Marvel fans and solid reviews from critics, low ratings and expensive costs – from its VFX to period-appropriate props, wardrobes, and locations – led to an early end for Agent Carter. In hindsight, it's quite something how the Marvel franchise made room for a 1940s-themed detective show on ABC. Thankfully, Atwell has kept her place in the MCU since, playing Peggy and other multiverse variants of her across different Marvel sequels.
17. Growing Up Chrisley
Reality TV has long given eccentric real-life individuals their 15 minutes of fame. Such was the case with Chrisley Knows Best, a family-oriented reality show that chronicled the day-to-day life of wealthy Atlanta real estate figure Todd Chrisley and his family. In 2019, the eldest of the Chrisley children got their own show, Growing Up Chrisley, which saw them both move away to L.A. to pursue their dreams. The show lasted four seasons and ended in 2022, when Todd and his wife Julie were tried and convicted on charges of federal tax evasion. Maybe they didn't know best after all.
16. Mrs. Columbo
For years, Peter Falk's rumpled, unassuming, but razor-sharp detective Lieutenant Columbo alluded to an unnamed, unseen wife. In 1979, Kate Mulgrew finally brought a face to Mrs. Columbo – or did she? Lasting just one season, Mrs. Columbo, a newspaper journalist, solves her own cases of murder separate from her husband, who is also present but far out of frame. The show was deeply unpopular, not only with audiences but with the producers of Columbo and Falk himself. This led to the show being retooled completely, from a retitle to Kate Loves a Mystery to Mulgrew's character being renamed Kate Callahan who was no longer married. This didn't help the former Mrs. Columbo's prospects however, with the show ending at 13 episodes.
15. A Different World
A Different World doesn't sound so strange on paper. The show's premise is that it takes place at a fictional historically Black college in Virginia, with the show's characters exploring their ups and downs as not only students but politically and socially active individuals; some episodes dealt directly with issues like race, class, sexual assault, even the AIDS crisis. What's weird is that A Different World began as a spin-off of The Cosby Show, following Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet) as she starts higher education and moves into the Hillman College dorms. Her roommate was a white student, played by Marisa Tomei (originally Meg Ryan, fun fact), with the show intending to explore white and Black social dynamics. When Bonet got pregnant in real life, Denise was written out of her own show (along with Tomei's character). It gets weirder: After the departure of Denise, A Different World never stopped tying back to The Cosby Show with recurring guest appearances from the other show's cast.
14. Models, Inc.
In 1994, Models, Inc. saw another expansion of the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise, which had already seen the successful launch of the spin-off Melrose Place. But Models, Inc. saw considerably less fanfare than either of its originators. The show revolved around the L.A. modeling agency run by the mother of Heather Locklear's character on Melrose Place, with all the drama, intrigue, betrayals, and romances that happen in the cutthroat world of fashion modeling. The show lasted a mere 29 episodes of a single season, vastly overshadowed by both Melrose Place (which ran for 7 seasons) and Beverly Hills, 90210, which ran for 10 and is widely acclaimed as one of the most influential teen TV shows of all time.
13. Cunk on Earth
Philomena Cunk is the greatest thing to happen to planet Earth, preceded only by the 1989 release of the Belgian techno anthem, "Pump Up the Jam." In Cunk on Earth, Diane Morgan reprises her role as straight-faced, ill-informed journalist Philomena Cunk, a character that originated in Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe. In bizarre interviews with actual historians – or as Cunk puts it, "leading academics, clevernauts, and expertists" – Cunk grills them with hard-hitting questions like "What is a building?" and "When you teach a kid Shakespeare, do their heads grow physically bigger?" Cunk on Earth received critical acclaim, and only qualifies as "weird" because of Morgan's pinpoint deadpan delivery.
12. Young Americans
There was no room for Will Krudski on Dawson's Creek, so he had his own show in Young Americans. (Sponsored by Coca-Cola.) Conceived independently as its own show by producer Steve Antin, main character Will (played by Rodney Scott) was retroactively added as a lost friend of the Dawson gang in that show's third season to tee it up as a mid-season replacement during Dawson's Creek's summer hiatus. The show chronicles brilliant student Will as he attends an elite New England boarding school, tormented by his secret cheating on the entrance exam. Coca-Cola was a major sponsor for the show, with so much in-show advertising that it got roasted in a segment on The Daily Show. Ultimately, Young Americans couldn't float like Dawson's Creek and ended after its one and only season.
11. Degrassi High
What happens after junior high? High school, of course. Following the acclaim of Degrassi Junior High, now a staple of Canadian popular culture, the sequel spin-off Degrassi High picks up with the same kids as they navigate the highs and lows of high school. Retaining the authenticity of Degrassi Junior High, the show kept exploring difficult subject matter ranging from teen pregnancies and abortion, mental health, suicide, to the rampant AIDS crisis. Despite critical acclaim, the rapidly aging actors and behind-the-scenes exhaustion led to the show's cancellation after two seasons. In 2001, Degrassi was revived in Degrassi: The Next Generation.
10. Team Knight Rider
It's Knight Rider meets Power Rangers in this bizarre spin-off/legacy sequel to the original '80s classic Knight Rider. Set in the same universe, Team Knight Rider sees a team of five cutting-edge crime fighters who uphold the legacy of Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff's original character) by getting behind the wheels of their own supercharged supercars. Team Knight Rider wasn't embraced by Knight Rider's existing fanbase, who deemed it inferior to the original. The show ended with 22 episodes, on a cliffhanger that teased the return of Knight and KITT but ultimately never saw it through.
9. Joey
So, no one told Joey life was going to be this way? Spinning off from the TV titan Friends, Joey sees Joey Tribbiani (a returning Matt LeBlanc) strike out on his own in Los Angeles in pursuit of his acting dreams. Despite the enduring popularity of Friends, which is as beloved in the streaming era as it was during its broadcast run, Joey failed to retain the sizable Friends audience and suffered from low ratings. By 2006, the show felt like a relic, with more modern sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock, and The Office reinventing the sitcom wheel. In 2006, Joey was canceled after a rather respectable 46 episodes.
8. Blade: The Series
Not long after Wesley Snipes hung up his trenchcoat as Blade (at least until 2023's Deadpool & Wolverine), rapper and actor Sticky Fingaz took up the mantle in a continuation of the Blade movie trilogy. Created by Blade writer David S. Goyer and set after the events of Blade: Trinity, Blade: The Series sees the titular vampire hunter and "daywalker" continue his work slaying creatures of the night. A low-budget production for the now-defunct Spike channel, Blade: The Series lasted a short 13 episodes, but there's a whole lotta undead butt-kicking in that short amount of time.
7. Caprica
Caprica had quite an uphill battle. Spinning off from Battlestar Galactica, widely regarded as one of the greatest sci-fi TV shows of the 2000s, Caprica served as a prequel that aimed to reveal how mankind first created the Cylons, the race of artificially intelligent androids that would later turn on them and nearly wipe out the human race. In a vacuum, Caprica isn't a weird show, and in fact saw modest reviews from professional critics. But to follow Battlestar Galactica and so soon heaped unbearable expectations on Caprica, which failed to generate strong enough ratings for creator Ronald D. Moore to see it through. In early 2011, Syfy elected to air the last five episodes of Caprica in a burn-off marathon.
6. Space Ghost Coast to Coast
Decades after fighting evil in his traditional Hanna-Barbera series Space Ghost, the caped crimefighter found a new career: late-night talk show host. Made for Cartoon Network and boasting a surreal sense of humor that fundamentally defined Adult Swim, Space Ghost Coast to Coast sees the retired avenger awkwardly interview celebrities, from The Bee Gees to Metallica to Ben Stiller. (The brilliance of the show was that the writers wrote Space Ghost's questions after the interview was conducted, splicing the questions and answers to hilarious effect.) Being an obscure but actual superhero figure makes Coast to Coast that much better, with George Lowe's square-jawed performance contrasting with the zaniness around him.
5. The Ropers
Could a sitcom about landlords be any good? That's what The Ropers sought to find out. Spinning off from Three's Company, The Ropers followed Stanley and Helen Roper (Norman Fell and Audra Lindley respectively) who rented out the apartment to Jack, Janet, and Chrissy on Three's Company. The Ropers sees the title characters sell the building to live in the gated community of Cheviot Hills, where they experience hilarious culture clashes. Despite the seismic success of Three's Company, The Ropers didn't get nearly the same attention and was canceled after two seasons.
4. Saved by the Bell: The College Years
Saved by the Bell is one of the most successful spin-offs ever, originating from Good Morning, Miss Bliss and being retooled to focus on the (predatory) antics of Mark-Paul Gosselaar's Zack Morris. But after the kids left high school, it was time for a higher education. Thus begins Saved by the Bell: The College Years. While it features the return of OGs like Zack, Slater (Mario Lopez), Screech (Dustin Diamond), and Kelly (Tiffani Thiessen), new faces get thrown into the mix to fill out the campus of Cal U. While the show had very loose ideas of what college is actually like – like its way-too-involved residential advisor, played by ex-NFL pro Bob Golic – The College Years was more or less the same routine, only in marginally more adult settings. The College Years ultimately dropped out at just 19 episodes, but the theme song is still a banger.
3. DC's Legends of Tomorrow
While the Marvel Universe ruled the big screen, DC held it down on The CW with the "Arrowverse" franchise, chiefly overseen by TV giant Greg Berlanti. In this shared universe of live-action DC TV, Legends of Tomorrow staged the assembly of side characters and villains from Arrow and The Flash as they embarked on missions to save all of time from different threats. While in its first season Legends of Tomorrow played things straight, subsequent cast changes and creative retooling over time made it one of the most gleefully chaotic shows of the peak superhero era. From meeting the Justice Society of America to saving a young Barack Obama when he was a college student, there was no corner of history – real or fictional – that Legends of Tomorrow wasn't willing to go.
2. Star Trek: Lower Decks
When CBS was going all-in on streaming, Star Trek received special attention as a franchise ready to expand like no show has expanded before. Mike McMahan, a head writer of the hit adult animated series Rick and Morty, was invited to a meeting by producer Alex Kurtzman to discuss an animated Star Trek show. The result of those meetings became Star Trek: Lower Decks, an outrageous but unsuspectingly heartfelt animated comedy about the low-ranking support crew of a starship in the Star Trek universe. Over its five-season run, Star Trek: Lower Decks won over Star Trek and animation fans overall with its even balance of irreverence and genuine affection for the saga it spun from. Star Trek: Lower Decks may be the black sheep of the Trek universe, but its scrappy moxie is worth cheering for.
1. Mork & Mindy
Happy Days had already jumped the shark, literally, when Robin Williams first showed up as Mork from Ork. Following his one-off appearance, Robin Williams got his own show (alongside Pam Dawber) in the beloved Mork & Mindy. In theory, Mork & Mindy shouldn't work. Just how much are people willing to watch a random alien from Happy Days (a show that shouldn't have aliens in the first place) in his own show? Thanks to the outsized talents of Robin Williams, millions did. While Mork & Mindy isn't the longest nor most successful TV show in history, its run of four seasons is remembered as a showcase of Williams, who was just on the precipice of brilliance and his own career best. It's a weird sitcom, but thanks to Williams and Mork's love story with Mindy, it's also one of the greatest.
