10 TV Shows Which Completely Changed Their Premise

2. Smallville

The teen melodrama of Smallville's early years alienated comic book fans expecting a more traditional Man of Steel to reappear on their TV screens after the romanticism of the 1990s series Lois & Clark. Instead, we got a high school soap with superpowers in the mix, and the biggest enemy of season one was a tornado in Kansas. Still, it delivered on its promise of a young Clark Kent finding his feet in Smallville.

In later seasons, Clark had moved to Metropolis, established a familiar rapport with Lois Lane, become a part of a primitive Justice League and was essentially Superman in all but name. Smallville stuck firmly to its original promise of 'no tights, no flights', but instead drew more and more on the DC mythos. By its final season, in which Clark faced Darkseid, it was no secret that this was a comic book series and proud of it to boot, and it hadn't been set in Smallville for years.