There’s some lovely symmetry to Tim Allen’s career. Once every few years, he signs on for a sitcom that will have him playing some sort of everyman and dad. It will run for many years on whatever network gives it the greenlight, and then Allen will quietly do comedy shows and other work on the side until the next sitcom rolls around, which happened this spring when he filmed the new pilot Shifting Gears. The good news? ABC’s finally signed on to bring the series onto the TV schedule. The bad news? There’s a bit of a behind-the-scenes snag to fix before it moves forward.
When Allen and his newest co-star Kat Dennings signed on for Shifting Gears, they did so with Mike Scully and Julie Thacker Scully, both of The Simpsons fame (though Mike has also worked as co-executive producers and consulting producers on projects like Everybody Loves Raymond and Parks and Recreation.) Both were set to be writers and executive producers on the new ABC series, but this will no longer be the case.
Separately, Variety mentions Froy Gutierrez had also been cast to play a character named Nick in the new series, which will follow Tim Allen as a widower who owns his own body shop. In this sitcom iteration he won’t have kids at home — the actor is 71 at this point – but he will have an adult daughter, played by Kat Dennings. At the start of the show, the two will have been estranged for some time.
Casting changes often happen between pilots and when a show goes to series, as sometimes early screening audiences or the powers that be simply don’t think an actor or character fits as well as they’d imagined in the script. This famously happened on The Big Bang Theory, for example, when Kaley Cuoco replaced another character, Katie, played by Amanda Walsh. So while it’s likely unfortunate for Gutierrez he won’t have a major role moving forward, recastings are common.
Having to find a new showrunner this far in the game is less common. It happens, of course, people have different visions about what a show can be and ultimately the people with the most power prevail. No reason was given for why the sitcom is parting ways with its former writers and producers, but it’s worth pointing out Tim Allen also has an executive producing credit on Shifting Gears and presumably has a lot of say in the direction of the show.
Tim Allen seems pumped about the new series, and had shared pics from set when the pilot was coming together in June. Honestly, I was a little surprised this one didn’t get a greenlight a whole lot faster. It’s not going to be a part of ABC’s fall lineup, and it’s unclear if it will hit this coming TV season at all. Fixing its newfound showrunner problem is likely the first step.
One thing is clear: Tim Allen’s still the king of popular ’90s shows and this latest network TV return is hotly anticipated, and we’ll keep you posted every step of the way. In the meantime, you can catch the actor’s most recent series, The Santa Clauses, with a Disney+ subscription.
