The best and worst TV spinoffs

Cheers is an all-time beloved sitcom. Any spinoff had a lot to live up to. Frasier equaled and arguably bested its predecessor. The show was an Emmy magnet, and Kelsey Grammar solidified his spot as sitcom royalty.

Joey has a lot in common with Frasier. Both are spinoffs of iconic sitcoms titled after the first name of their lead characters. However, where Frasier soared, Joey sunk. The Friends spinoff was a total flop, becoming one of the most infamous spinoffs ever.

Watching his lukewarm late-night talk show, you can forget just how biting and hilarious Stephen Colbert was back in the day. Taking his persona from The Daily Show, Colbert crafted a show that surpassed its originator in every conceivable way. The Colbert Report was a work of true genius and the greatest political comedy show of all time.

MASH managed to stretch the Korean War out for 11 seasons, impressive given that the U.S. involvement in that war only lasted a few years. While MASH does not get talked about as much as other classic sitcoms, its series finale is the most-watched piece of television in history that isn’t a Super Bowl. Instead of going out on a high note, we got AfterMASH, a thoroughly mediocre sitcom best forgotten.

Granted, the characters Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell played on Kenan & Kel weren’t directly taken from All That, but this show is in the spirit of a spinoff. Kenan and Kel showed easy rapport on the Nickelodeon sketch show, so much so they were paired off for this sitcom. It stands as one of the best live-action sitcoms the network has done, showing that the duo could make their dynamic work for a full 22 minutes, not merely a three-minute sketch.

Once Richie Cunningham and crew aged up (and Ron Howard left the show), Joanie became more at the forefront of Happy Days. She was joined by the younger version of Fonzie, Chachi, and the two ended up paired off. They were then given their own sitcom, but it basically “jumped the shark” the second it debuted, to borrow a phrase that originated with Happy Days.

Here’s a better Happy Days spinoff (and a shout-out to Mork & Mindy, which was neither good enough nor bad enough to make this list). The characters of Laverne and Shirley were introduced as friends of Fonzie’s and introduced to Richie on a double date. Garry Marshall always had spinoffs in mind, it seems. The ditzy duo got their own show about their lives as roommates, which lasted for eight seasons and 178 episodes of solid comedy.

For all the love Oprah gets, she bears responsibility for unleashing both Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz on the world. As odious as Dr. Phil is, Dr. Oz takes the cake. In addition to dishing out questionable, often-refuted medical information, Mehmet Oz’s show ended when he decided to run for the Senate as a Republican in Pennsylvania. Oh, and he was a terrible Jeopardy! host too.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show is a classic sitcom, but Lou Grant is a searing drama. The show featured Ed Asner’s character returning to the world of newspapers, and the show would often dive into thorny subjects. Lou Grant won the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy twice, and Asner won an Emmy for playing Lou, which he had previously done in the Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series back in the Mary Tyler Moore days.

What if the three "Golden Girls" who still wanted to do the show got a new sitcom? That’s basically The Golden Palace. Sans Bea Arthur, the remaining trio moves into a Miami hotel they’ve bought. Even the presence of a young Don Cheadle couldn’t save this show from being a one-season blunder.

This time, a more-traditional spinoff of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Rhoda featured Mary’s best friend Rhoda Morgenstern back in her native New York. Quickly, the show took the perpetually single character and married her off, but later had her get divorced during the third season. It was bold for the era and also reinvigorating for the series.

Look, Saved by the Bell isn’t good, to begin with, but even by those standards, The College Years is bad. We get the three main guys from the original — Zack, Slater, and Screech — joining with Kelly and two new girls for a series of banal misadventures. The only worthwhile thing about The College Years? The fact that Professor Jeremiah Lasky is played by Patrick Fabian, now known the world over as Howard Hamlin from Better Call Saul.

Buffy slayed a lot of vampires, but not Angel. That’s good, otherwise David Boreanaz’s character couldn’t have gotten a spinoff. The vampire with a soul ended up basically working as a supernatural private eye, a scenario that resonated with fans and earned the show five seasons and 110 episodes.

The show had a funny name, but not much else going for it. Beverly Hills Buntz was a fish-out-of-water quasi-comedy starring Dennis Franz’s character from Hill Street Blues. Only nine of the 13 episodes shot even aired.

It was easy to forget that Family Matters was a spinoff until people started saying, “Did you know Family Matters was a spinoff?” enough to etch it in our brains. Indeed, the character of Harriette Winslow was an elevator operator on Perfect Strangers. Of course, Harriette would become arguably the least important main character on her own spinoff show, and ultimately, the entire Winslow family would sit in the shadow of Steve Urkel.

Hey, at least Baywatch Nights gets credit for getting weird to try and save the show. The first season was a straightforward private-eye mystery drama. When that failed, the second season was basically an X-Files ripoff starring David Hasselhoff. That flopped, too, but it was a fascinating flop, at least.

Basically, the crew of Boston Legal was added to The Practice in its eighth season to propel this spinoff. At the forefront were James Spader and William Shatner. Both of those men would end up winning Emmys for their work on the show, which arguably overshadowed its predecessor.

Sure, maybe Mama worked as a sketch on The Carol Burnett Show. It didn’t really, but at least it was viable in that format. Mama’s Family never stopped feeling like or looking like a comedy sketch masquerading as a sitcom. Seriously, Mama’s Family is one of the worst-looking sitcoms ever, and that includes shows from the beginning of television.

They started as the neighbors of the Bunkers, and then George and Louise “Weezy” Jefferson moved on up to the East Side. It was a ‘70s sitcom about African-Americans who were affluent business owners, which seemingly struck a chord at the time. The show ran for 11 seasons and a whopping 253 episodes.

We started with a great Cheers spinoff, so let us end with a bad one. Now, you see the name The Tortellis and think, “Oh, a spinoff about Carla Tortelli. Maybe she’s not ideal for her own show, but I can see that.” Ah, but you would be mistaken. No, The Tortellis is about Carla’s ex-husband Nick Tortelli, played by Dan Hedaya. Remember him from his smattering of Cheers appearances? Do you remember his new wife, the bubbly blonde Loretta? Those two were the titular Tortellis. The show only lasted 13 episodes.