It’s been a long time since we haven’t heard any pilot orders for about a year now when the strikes took place for most of last year but now ABC has made its first move on what is going to be a huge year ahead for the Fall 2024 window and it’s going to be a half-hour comedy pilot led by the legendary Tim Allen called Shifting Gears whose studios and distribution will be run by 20th Television (a subsidiary of Disney). He will be playing Matt & will also be an executive producer of the show, who runs his own classic car restoration shop and is a widow where things about to change for his own personal restoration once his estranged daughter & her teenage kids move into his house – Interesting. As said, the network will stick with quality than quantity when choosing new shows including mid-season for January-February 2025 with the first step is looking at new show projects/ideas that is worth looking at for a year, then some will be selected to be put into the test (pilot run) & hope for the best before only a few will be given the chance to stand things out on TV. After this show, let’s see which new drama pilot will be up next while we haven’t heard much in-development progress since the end of 2022 with the Front Line (another medical drama involving Michael Strahan), a reboot of Ally McBeal from the late 90s & a legal drama from The Rookie’s Alexi Hawley.
ABC hasn’t produced any new comedy shows since Not Dead Yet in February last year where two of the 2023 candidates Keeping it Together and Public Defenders unfortunately didn’t meet the standard they were hoping for that was set by Abbott Elementary. So there’s some chance Shifting Gears might not make it depending on what other new comedy pilots they will order in the next few weeks/months, but with Allen as the star show and as long as the plot/writing is good, it’s about time they make the move as if they really made a straight-to-series order just like they did to High Potential at the same time in May last year (a police dramedy adopted from France whose mother of three has a huge IQ in solving cases which was originally set for October last year but the strikes have pushed back to this October). It’s great seeing Allen getting back along with the network regardless of the outcome, having been with them before such as Home Improvement (1991-1999) & Last Man Standing (2011-17 for six seasons on ABC & 2018-2021 with last three on FOX). And he also played Santa again this time as a Disney + show after huge success on The Santa Clause movies back in the 1990s-2000s. Yes, there’s rumours that the series might not come back just for this year but maybe next year considering the scripted world is catching up right now.
