What Even Is a Spin-Off?

A spinoff in television is a new series containing characters or settings that originated in a previous series, but with a different focus, tone, or theme.

—the Wikipedia list of spin-offs page.

There is, of course, a list of spin-offs on Wikipedia. You’re not surprised; I wasn’t surprised. Of course there is. But what ended up surprising me was discovering how bad the list is. It’s very long. There are shows on it going back to the earliest days of television, from multiple continents. I’m sure someone from non-Anglophone countries would be able to find shows left off in their native language, but they might well find at least one and probably several, depending on what language they speak. Shockingly, it leaves off DeGrassi High School in its list of the DeGrassi franchise, despite its probably being the best-known one. Worse, though is the sheer amount of shows on the list that shouldn’t be.

The page has a pretty good summary of spin-offs. (The main page uses the hyphenated version; the spun-off page uses the single word version.) It distinguishes between spin-offs, backdoor pilots, legacy sequels, revivals, and reboot series. A legacy sequel, revival, or reboot series, it informs us seriously, is not a spin-off. It specifically calls out shows such as new Who and Battlestar Galactica as not being spin-offs. A rule I personally would add that isn’t there is that a reality show that’s intent on creating a franchise, such as Big Brother, is separate from the “now we’re doing the same show but with a different thing” such as The Great Pottery Throw-Down and may or may not be seen as a spin-off.

Now that we have our rules, Wikipedia is just going to throw them all out the window. While none of the specific examples it uses for “this is not a spin-off” are on the list, easily half of it fits into one or another of the exceptions it specifically calls out to not count. For example, one of the first legacy sequels I became aware of as a child was The New Leave It to Beaver. Practically the only cast member from the original show who wasn’t on it was Hugh Beaumont, who dodged it by being dead; the only new characters to the regular cast were various spouses and children of the characters who were children on the original. And, yes, this is on the list.

In revivals on the list, it’s illuminating to compare it to the Wikipedia list of revivals and see how many of them make it to both lists. Not all, but, say, Fuller House. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. That ‘90s Show. X-Men ‘97. But not, say, Twin Peaks: The Return or Quantum Leap, despite both shows’ having fewer characters in common with the originals that X-Men ‘97 does. It’s very odd and makes me wonder if anyone over there is keeping an editorial eye on their own pages.

Reboots? While it’s a term only recently applied to television, I’d argue that quite a lot of children’s animation belongs there. There are eight animated spin-offs of The Archie Show listed, and I think it’s all just, you know, Archie cartoons. Similarly, there are literally at least three dozen Kamen Rider spin-offs listed, and I think it’s all just “my Gods there’s a lot of Kamen Rider.” Japanese shows are particularly suited to that—my Gods there’s a lot of Gundam stuff—but the dozen and a half Scooby-Doo shows all fit together there, too. They might as well all be the same show for all any of us care or even notice.

Now, there are good points to the list. It hadn’t occurred to me that, yes, The Daily Show has had four spin-offs with varying degrees of success in its history. I didn’t realize that Jake and the Fatman started as a backdoor pilot from Matlock and that Diagnosis Murder spun off from Jake and the Fatman. If they constructed the list right, you could follow the spin-off trails of shows like how we got to Mork and Mindy from Love American Style. And it lets you say things like, “Oh, yeah, The Tortellis existed!” But somebody with the personality type to edit Wikipedia needs to give that list a serious going-over.