It was bloody awful and ran for maybe three episodes.
What’s Happening Now was pretty good as I recall. But yeah, Rerun and Shirley pretty much carried the show.
I thought that Are You Being Served was cancelled then brought back. Nope, it just ran for a really long time.
And a Dick Wolf/Ed O’Neill version ran for two seasons starting in 2003.
And wasn’t bad as I recall- certainly on par with the original.
Surprising as there had been an attempt to bring back Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best in the 1970s, especially after Happy Days (a 50s sitcom 20 years after the '50s) and both had flopped.
(It was also rumored that Desi Arnaz was in negotiations to star in another series with ex-wife Lucy in the early '80s but she wasn’t interested- not sure if it’s true or if it would have worked or if they’d have been the Ricardos, but it certainly wouldn’t have been worse than her godawful last series.)
Perhaps you’re thinking of (US title) Are you Being Served? Again!, (UK title) Grace & Favour.
I seem to recall that the Brady Bunch tried something similar by launching a revival with many of the original cast members in the late 1980s or early '90s.
If you are going to count Dr. Who (with everything changing except the premis and the TARDIS), you would have to go with Star Trek (Next Gen, etc.), and really, the films should be considered also. They were really just revivals of the format in a slightly different medium.
Steptoe and Son (remade as Sanford and Son in the US) ran for 4 series (27 episodes, including the Comedy Playhouse pilot) between '62 and '65, then returned for another 4 series (30 episodes, including 2 Christmas specials) between '70 and '74 . Two films were also made around that time: Steptoe and Son in '72, followed by Steptoe and Son Ride Again in '73.
The Likely Lads, which ran for 3 series (20 episodes) between '64 and '66 came back as Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? for 2 series (27 episodes, including a Christmas special) between '73 and '74. That was quite a hit at the time and there was a film version made (this time just titled The Likely Lads) in '76.
At least three times.
In 1981 the TV movie The Brady Girls Get Married (really just the two oldest) was a hit and spawned The Brady Brides, which ran for a few episodes before getting pulled. In 1988 A Very Brady Christmas was also a big hit and spawned a really regrettable series called The Bradys where they tried to give the Brady clan “real” problems: Jan was an alcoholic, Bobby became a paraphlegic, Marcia and her husband were broke and on public assistance, etc.- and nope, not making that up. Cancelled very quickly.
The worst was the first, however: The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, a musical comedy show in 1977. Picture Robert Reed- more permed than ever, Florence Henderson and the kids (save for Eve Plumb, who wisely sat this one out to become a teen prostitute on a made for TV movie the same year [true story] so they brought in another actress to take her place) and picture them all in skin tight gold jumpsuits singing “Shake Your Booty”. Throw in Rip Taylor as a regular and an occasional disco number with Ann B. Davis. It very nearly ended television.
Are you including TV shows that got revived in animated form for Saturday morning TV (e.g. Star Trek)?
Marcia was alcoholic, Jan couldn’t have children of her own, so adopted a Korean girl in about 15 minutes.
I thought it was great! And then I watched a re-run somewhere in the 90s. 
Which came after a 7 year break, and included almost the entirety of the last series’ cast.
Columbo would sort of fit the bill. It was never a regular weekly series, but it had a run in the 70s as part of the NBC Mystery Movie rotation. It returned in the 80s as sporadic movies of the week. (This is just the Peter Falk version. I know a couple of other actors played the role before him. In fact, should there be a remake the character should be played by Mark Ruffalo.)
Ann Jillian was only on the first year of It’s a Livings comeback. So, any so called bitchiness she might have added would have been gone early in the 4 year run
Just in terms of my personal opinion on its quality, I thought those first three seasons before the original cancellation were brilliant, groundbreaking stuff, and still do. However, post-revival, the show has managed to become the mess all its detractors say it is; enjoyment is not impossible, but the show on the whole has become engulfed in its various pandering flaws. So, YMMV, but I feel the quality definitely suffered in the revival, for whatever reason.
That having been said, the kind of shift the show underwent isn’t really of the “This doesn’t work at all anymore” kind from the OP, and the show is indeed still quite popular, I believe, so this should still count, I say.
Poo. Totally missed that the OP was asking for US shows only.
And another candidate.
MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY. Ran form 1953-1964 on ABC and CBS.
Less successful was MAKE ROOM FOR GRANDADDY on ABC 1970-1971
This is what I came to mention. As revivals go, it was pretty successful and also smartly done. The ‘show’ years matched ‘real life’ years, and they based the new version of the show precisely on the fact that it had been so long since the two main characters had last met, and that they had ended up living such very different lives. There can’t be many times in TV history that it has been possible to do this, or that it had worked so well.
Incidentally, this show is the subject of an ongoing row between the actors who played the two leads (Rodney Bewes and James Bolam). The BBC is willing to broadcast the shows again and fans of the series would like them to do so. However, although one of the stars (Bewes) is all in favour, the other (Bolam) won’t give his permission. They need his permission to broadcast the shows again, so unless he relents the shows will have to sit in the archives, unwatched.
Sonny & Cher had four different tv incarnations. The original S&C then when the marriage broke up each had a separate variety show both which failed, then they were reunited but divorced on a fourth series. The only thing I remember was a skit with Howard Cosell as a football coach commanding “robot” players on Sonny’s show or was it Cher’s, or the reunited divorced version? All perished.
Charles Aidman originally did the narrations. He was later replaced by Robin Ward and the producers went back and redubbed the early episodes with a Ward narration for syndication.
They did a third version of the series in 2002. Forest Whitaker hosted this series.
And, for the sake of completeness, Burgess Meredith was the guy who narrated the 1983 movie.
