20 successful TV shows that were knockoffs of other shows

During its first couple of seasons, Schitt’s Creek was very much a knockoff of Arrested Development, focusing as it does on a wealthy family who lose much of their money and have to figure out what to do. Soon enough, though, it proved to be so much more than that, as it found a surer sense of identity and storytelling in its later seasons. Thanks to Daniel Levy’s strong writing chops and the remarkable performances of its cast, it soon became more than just another fish-out-of-water story.

Say what one will about Hanna-Barbera, but the studio knew how to make the most out of what it had. Thus, it was more than willing to cannibalize its own properties, as it demonstrated with The Jetsons, which was essentially The Flintstones but set in the distant future rather than the distant past. In addition to featuring the same style of animation, its characters mapped quite neatly onto their prehistoric counterparts, with the notable difference that George and Jane Jetson have more children than Fred and Wilma, who eventually have only Pebbles.

The enormous popularity of Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby-Doo, both as a character and as a show, essentially guaranteed that the studio would create its own run of knockoffs. There are many Scooby-Doo clones, but one of the most notable is Jabberjaw, which also features an anthropomorphic animal — the shark, Jabberjaw — and his human compatriots as they attempt to keep their underwater world safe from a variety of villains. It may lack some of Scooby-Doo’s innate charm, but it’s still a fairly watchable Saturday morning cartoon.

Friends is obviously one of the most successful and beloved sitcoms of the 1990s (and, arguably, in TV history). However, there's also no doubt that it is, in many ways, a far less diverse iteration of the sitcom Living Single, which has a very similar premise, focusing as it does on a group of friends living in New York and living in the same building. The fact that Friends managed to become such a huge phenomenon — thanks in part to more network support — just makes it ripoff status all the more glaring.

It’s hard to think of a ripoff more obvious than Snorks. Everything from the design of the characters to their nonsensical name is meant to evoke the similar Smurfs, who were the star of their own show. In this case, though, the title creatures live underwater, although their physical appearance is remarkably similar to that of the Smurfs. For all that they were clearly designed to compete with their blue-skinned compatriots, they never really caught on or became much of a phenomenon. Instead, the show enjoyed limited popularity.

I Dream of Jeannie certainly has its charms, and it’s one of those quirky sitcoms that were all the rage in the 1960s. It’s worth noting, though, that it came out just a year after Bewitched, which had a somewhat similar premise, in that it focused on a witch trying to live a somewhat normal life among mortals. In this case, the magical being in question is the titular genie, named Jeannie, who ends up serving and falling in love with an astronaut. It’s obviously just as silly, if less clever, than Bewitched, but it still has its nostalgic charms.

Step by Step boasted a very talented cast, including such TV stalwarts as Patrick Duffy and Suzanne Somers. Its basic premise about a blended family and their various comedic mishaps looks a lot like The Brady Bunch of the 1970s. The similarities are legion, including the fact that the father is a brunette and the mother is a blonde. Though the families themselves are not as split in terms of gender, there’s no getting around the fact that this show is in most important ways a clone of its predecessor, though it does have some charms of its own.

The animated series The Flintstones is a key part of the animated series pantheon, and its characters remain beloved by fans, new and old. In its plot contours and its basic setup, however, it’s essentially a rip-off of the sitcom The Honeymooners. Even The Simpsons observed this fact back in the 1990s. The Flintstones has nevertheless managed to exert its influence over the animated sitcom, and one could argue that The Simpsons, in turn, is itself an homage or knockoff of its 1960s predecessor. 

By this point, Family Guy has twenty-three seasons under its belt and has more than established its own identity as a series. In origin, however, it was very clearly written to imitate The Simpsons. Both series are edgy adult comedies and feature an attractive wife and an unappealing and oafish husband, along with their three children. This was something that many journalists of the time noted, and so it makes sense that the show would make an effort in later seasons to distinguish itself and craft its own unique brand of adult comedy.

Julian Fellowes is known for producing opulent costume dramas, and none have been quite as successful as Downton Abbey. The series focuses on the titular estate, in particular the noble Crawley family and their various servants. It bears a striking resemblance to Upstairs Downstairs, which similarly focuses on a noble family and its servants in the early 20th century. The fact that there are so many similarities between the series demonstrates the extent to which there is an insatiable appetite for these examinations in the British class system.

Married…With Children was notorious for its raunchy and unsentimental take on the American nuclear family. It found its echo in the series Unhappily Ever After, which featured almost exactly the same premise, with family dysfunction and an unsentimental look at life in America during the late 1990s. Despite the fact that it was undeniably derivative, the show managed to be clever in its own right — particularly in its breaking of the fourth wall — and it even managed to last five seasons on the air.

Zombies were all the rage for much of the 2010s, and they made several appearances on TV. After iZombie revealed that maybe not all flesh eaters were the bad guys, Santa Clarita Diet  followed suit, focusing on Drew Barrymore’s Sheila Hammond and her husband and family, in particular their efforts to heal her after she becomes a zombie. Like its CW counterpart, Santa Clarita Diet really did seem to care about its characters, even as it also wasn’t shy about leaning into the violence and gore so common in the zombie genre.

Mid-Century Modern is very transparent about the fact that it is intended to be a knockoff of The Golden Girls, though this time featuring three gay best friends who move in when one of their mutual friends dies unexpectedly. The three gay leads each have elements of Dorothy, Rose, and Blanche, while Linda Lavin, who plays the mother of Nathan Lane’s character, Bunny, is clearly Sophia. However, during its first season, the series still manages to carve out its own little comedic space, and it comes to feel more like an homage than a knockoff per se.

The horror anthology has experienced a bit of a renaissance over the past couple of decades, thanks in no small part to Ryan Murphy’s long-running drama American Horror Story. Channel Zero clearly takes a page from Murphy’s book with its choice to tell a self-contained story with each season. While it is genuinely chilling in places, due to its draw on various disturbing internet phenomena, it lacks the camp sensibility and riotous violence that are such a key part of American Horror Story’s enduring appeal. 

The popularity of HBO’s Game of Thrones basically guaranteed that it would spawn a number of imitators. History Channel, for example, produced the medieval-themed drama Vikings, which clearly draws on Thrones’ gritty and grimy aesthetic in its portrayal of such notable Viking figures as Ragnar Lothbrok. It was clearly the network’s attempt to capitalize on the success of Thrones, and while it didn’t have quite the level of political complexity of its counterpart, it has more than Middle Age drama to satisfy those who want to see more of this period of European history on-screen.

It’s very common for network shows to riff off each other, and the dynamic between Psych and The Mentalist is a good illustration of this. They’re obviously different genres — the former is a comedy and the latter is a drama with pretty significant stakes — but in other ways, they’re remarkably similar. Perhaps most importantly, both feature a main character who has powers of recall and observation that are so finely honed that they seem almost mystical, which helps to explain why they are recruited to help solve crimes.

The short-lived Australian TV series Territory is, in many ways, nothing more than a clone of Yellowstone, the enormously popular US TV series. Both series focus on a family and its ancestral property, and the lengths to which they will go to protect it and keep it within the family. However, there’s just something missing from Territory that keeps it from ever achieving the same level of soap opera grandeur that Yellowstone  attains, and it doesn’t help that it lacks a powerful presence like Kevin Costner.

The simply-named Suits is, as even the fans will acknowledge, cut from the same cloth as White Collar, which started its run a few years earlier. Both feature unlikely friendships and partnerships. White Collar features a con man who ends up teaming up with the FBI, while Suits features a man who ends up being employed by a high-powered lawyer even though he doesn’t have a degree. The fact that they were both on the same network (USA) makes the knockoff element seem even more glaring.

Breaking Bad was a show that managed to be such a success that it spawned a number of imitators. One of the most notable of these was Netflix’s Ozark, which focuses on Marty and Wendy Byrde, a married couple who become increasingly entangled with a Mexican drug cartel, eventually becoming as ruthless as their original employers. Their descent into darkness mirrors Walter White’s in Breaking Bad, and although the show takes its own path, its debt to the earlier series is evident from beginning to end.

David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks is arguably one of the most influential TV series ever made, and it has spawned its fair share of imitators. Riverdale, for example, has many plot similarities to Lynch’s production, including a murder, a small town, and lots of twists and turns; there’s even an homage of sorts to Twin Peaks in its opening credits. It’s entertaining TV, to be sure, and it eventually started to outgrow its original influences to become something strange and decidedly unique.