10 TV Shows Which Completely Changed Their Premise

For better or for worse.

Fringe TV Show
Fox

Is there any question more difficult to answer than the request to boil your favourite show down to a single sentence?

Selling Mad Men to someone on the basis that it's about advertising executives is a tall order, as is convincing conservative relatives that a show about drug dealing is one of the great cultural milestones of the century.

Everyone's had that conversation which ends with a mumbled assurance that they'll check it out sometime while you wail, "But it's really good!" It's even more difficult to encapsulate all the depth of a TV series in a quick sales pitch when it doesn't only alter its tone, characters and style during its time on air, but also its most basic premise.

Long-running shows have a tendency to change over the years, but this article includes only those for which the original summary actually became inaccurate, for better or for worse. Spoilers abound, so be warned.

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Grace Murray hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.