America’s Dad is coming back to ABC. Tim Allen‘s latest series, Shifting Gears, has received a series order at ABC, which means Allen will be returning to the network that cemented his career as a sitcom legend.
The show stars Allen as a the “stubborn, widowed” owner of a car restoration shop whose daughter Riley, played by Kat Dennings, moves back home with her teenage kids to live with her dad and her brother, Nick. Nick, who will be recast after the pilot, according to Variety, is described as “a game coder who put his life on hold to come home and help his father at the shop.”
The series will also star NCIS: New Orleans actor Daryl “Chill” Mitchell, who will play a former Marine and a mechanic at the shop. Maxwell Simkins and Barrett Margolis will star as Riley’s teenagers.
Allen will executive produce the sitcom alongside Marty Adelstein, Becky Clements, Richard Baker and Rick Messina, all of whom worked on Last Man Standing.
Allen famously starred in the ABC sitcom Home Improvement through the ’90s as Tim “The Toolman” Taylor, a father of three boys. He won a Golden Globe in 1995 for his performance as the family man.
He later returned to the network in 2011 for Last Man Standing, in which he played a father trying to “maintain his manliness in a world increasingly dominated by women.”
Now, it appears that the actor is returning to the network one more time for another go at the family sitcom — though it won’t be for the Home Improvement reboot some people were hoping for.
Allen’s Home Improvement co-star Patricia Richardson, who played his wife Jill, recently shut down any rumors of a potential reboot starring the original cast. She claimed that, though Allen had hinted at a reboot in interviews, he never got in touch with her or Jonathan Taylor Thomas, who played one of their kids.
“I called Jonathan one day and said, ‘Has he asked you about this? He went, ‘No,’” she recalled. “So why is he saying everyone is on board when he hasn’t talked to you or me?”
She added, “I wrote a big thing on Twitter and said I’m not involved in any series with Jill and I’ve also never even been asked to do another Home Improvement reunion thing, but I would not want to.”
Richardson mentioned that it would be difficult to get the cast back together since they all went their separate ways after the show ended in 1999.
“I mean, Zach is now a felon,” she said, referring to Zachery Tyler Bryan, who was arrested and charged for DUI. “Taran [Noah Smith] hasn’t acted since he left the show; he’s not an actor anymore. And Jonathan’s not really interested in acting. He wants to direct and write.”
Shifting Gears is slated to premiere in 2025 on ABC.
