I was talking with someone and they mentioned the show Lou Grant. That was the rare show that was a spin off but also a completely different genre than the parent show (MTM was a half hour sitcom and LG was an hour drama).
Besides animated spin offs (animated versions of Happy Days or other shows) there aren’t many other examples of this. What are some other ones?
“Trapper John, M.D.,” spun off from, “MAS*H,” but was an hour-long medical drama instead of a half-hour war comedy. And somehow they made Wayne Rogers look like Pernell Roberts.
Wasn’t The Lone Gunmen a largely comedic spin-off of The X-Files?
The Simpsons, an animated sitcom, is a spinoff of The Tracey Ullman Show, a sketch comedy/variety show.
Mama’s Family was a sitcom spun off from a variety/sketch show, The Carol Burnette Show. Close enough?
Baywatch Nights was originally a detective show spun off from Baywatch and eventually became a show about the supernatural.
Historical comedy “Happy Days” spun off the science-fiction comedy “Mork and Mindy”.
“B.J. and the Bear” was an adventure show with a little bit of comedy about a trucker who was often hassled by corrupt cops. It spun off “Sheriff Lobo”, which was a broad comedy about a lovably corrupt cop.
The sitcom Alice was spun from the movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, which is not at all a comedy.
The Honeymooners was spun off of the DuMont network’s*** Cavalcade of Stars***, a variety/sketch show with Jackie Gleason.
Happy Days also spawned Laverne and Shirley, a “female buddy” sitcom in the mold of Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance.
About the only thing the two series had in common was the name of the lead character.
The sitcom McHale’s Navy was spun off of a one-time “dramedy” titled Seven against the Sea, where the main conflict was between pleasure and duty.
Hill Street Blues was a serious drama series. The short-lived spin-off Beverly Hills Buntz was much more comedic.
For legal reasons, Trapper John MD was supposedly a spin-off from the movie MASH and not from the series MASH. So Pernell Roberts was supposed to Elliott Gould not Wayne Rogers.
On a side note, Gould played Trapper John first but he is five years younger than Rogers and ten years younger than Roberts. And he is the only one of the three still alive.
Not completely. It was clearly established that Roberts was playing the same character as the one from MASH. Mary McCarty’s character was a nurse who had served with Trapper John in Korea. And Gregory Harrison’s character was a younger doctor who had also served in a MASH unit (in Vietnam rather than Korea).
I always wanted to see a spinoff of ***Gunsmoke ***titled Doc Adams, MD:
*"It’s 100 years after Dodge City, and your favorite GP is back! He’s a Civil War veteran … teamed with young Alonzo Gates, a Spanish-American War veteran. Together, they’ll try **anything *to save a life!"
In 1961 Jackie Gleason hosted a game show called You’re in the Picture. The next week Gleason appeared on an empty stage and spent the entire second episode apologizing for the first episode. Episodes after that were called The Jackie Gleason Show and featured him talking to celebrities.
The Brady Bunch, a sitcom, became The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, complete with singing and dancing. Then it was reborn with Marcia and Jan as The Brady Brides, another sitcom; and finally as an hour-long family drama called The Bradys.
Dirty Sally was a half-hour drama-comedy spun off from the one hour drama Gunsmoke.
Lou Grant was an hour long drama.
Did you read the OP? 
The Fast Show, a UK broken comedy sketch show much loved by Johnny Depp (The Fast Show - Wikipedia), had a few quirky spin-offs led by recurring characters:
"*In 2001, Ron Manager, Tommy and the interviewer fronted a comedy panel game show on Sky 1 called “Jumpers for Goalposts”. The interviewer was the presenter while Ron Manager and Tommy were the resident team captains.
Swiss Toni did a stand-alone series in 2003 and 2004 and broadcast on BBC Three*."
Not quite a spin-off but also odd, “In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow quotes the show, the Rowley Birkin line “… and then they made me their chief!”. In a deleted scene of the movie, Sparrow also uses the Mark Williams catchphrase "I’ll get me coat.” "
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