5 Sitcom Spin-offs Worse Than ‘Uncle Fester’ Will Be

On Monday morning, Netflix announced that they will be spinning off their franchise super-hit Wednesday with Uncle Fester, a series devoted to Fred Armisen’s performance as the avuncular Addams Family character. If making an Uncle Fester TV show with the guy who isn’t Christopher Lloyd sounds like the worst idea imaginable to you, just remember that, at one point, a boardroom full of TV executives decided to make a new Friends without five of the six Friends.

The sitcom spin-off is one of those mercurial TV show premises that can only really go one of two ways — either you use already beloved characters to create something novel and end up with a new, unique hit like Frasier, or you butcher an established dynamic with a derivative mess and make one of the M*A*S*H spin-offs that wasn’t Trapper John, MD. It’s a high-risk, high-reward play that rarely lands anywhere in the middle between greatness and garbage. Judging by Netflix’ track record with, well, everything, the fact that Wednesday was a hit almost makes it feel more likely that Uncle Fester will flop since they used up all their luck on the original.

Nevertheless, with the talent behind Uncle Fester, it’s unlikely that the show will land itself near the top of the highly competitive list of worst sitcom spin-offs of all time. For my money, the Mount Rushmore of miserable spin-offs is…