Why do only certain
spin-offs succeed?

It seems like the most obvious plan in the world. Take a successful TV show, pick out one or two characters, transplant them to a new setting, and voilà: a whole new show, with its own built-in audience. But if it were that easy, every spin-off would duplicate its progenitor’s success; instead, those that hit are the exception, not the rule.

This May, two long-running spin-offs — “Frasier” and “Angel” — take their final bows; just a few short months later, two of the most-watched shows on the dial — “Friends” and “C.S.I.” — will each debut a spin-off.  "Friends" star Matt LeBlanc will take his soap-opera star Joey to Los Angeles in the new sitcom "Joey." "C.S.I." will follow a new group of crime-scene investigators to New York, for a new series that will be called either "C.S.I.: New York" or "C.S.I.: Manhattan," and will reportedly star Gary Sinise.

There is a difference between a spin-off and a franchise. “Frasier”  took an established character and moved him away from the Boston bar of “Cheers” and to a radio job in Seattle. The audience gets to reconnect with a character it already knows and loves, and enjoy the fresh situations that result from his new and different circumstances.

A franchise takes an established format and makes a new show out of it with a different setting and different characters. Thus does “Law & Order” spawn “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (new squad of cops, different crime-fighting specialty), or does “C.S.I.” spawn “C.S.I.: Miami” (new squad of cops, different city).

Spin-offs feel safe
Both spin-offs and franchises can exploit the circumstances of their creation in several ways. Characters from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” would occasionally cross over and show up on “Angel.” Or a plotline from the progenitor series can be continued on its offspring.

But for every “C.S.I.: Miami” or “Frasier," there are a dozen spin-offs more akin to “Time of Your Life” (spun off from “Party of Five”), “Booker” (spun off from “21 Jump Street”), and “Living Dolls” (spun off from “Who’s The Boss"). If the odds are stacked against spin-offs right from their inception, why do the networks keep busting them out?

For one thing, TV is a notoriously repetitive medium; the theory is that if a format or a gimmick works once, it’ll work 27 more times. If “Joey” gets even half as many viewers as “Friends” did, NBC will consider it a great success. Similarly, a new “C.S.I.” gives CBS another time slot with which it can appeal to viewers too young to join the AARP.

Not only that, but it’s a lot less risky for a network to launch a show with a familiar format or character than it is to create a brand-new series, from scratch, of which viewers will recognize no part whatsoever. We fear change! Why would we try our luck with a new and totally alien show if it’s full of strangers and will probably end up getting cancelled anyway if we can just cozy up to Joey Tribbiani again? We put in the time getting to know him; maybe we aren’t ready to let him go yet.

Joey on the job
Thus, the producers of "Joey" should avoid the temptation to make Joey more conventionally likable by toning down the slightly disagreeable, though human, attributes of his character that we’ve come to know over the years.

Putting some palm trees outside the window and renaming the coffeeshop Griffith Perk isn’t going to fool anyone into believing that ‘Joey’ is just ‘Friends’ in L.A.

Frasier Crane’s function on “Cheers” was to be a pompous, intellectual blowhard; when he was moved to his own show, those tendencies of his character were magnified even more, and deflating them was the focus of some of the show’s most memorable humor.

If the star of “Joey” is suddenly very bright, careful of his diet, or unlucky with women (in other words: if he becomes Chandler), he won’t be the character we know, and the show won’t connect with its intended audience.

The producers should also avoid the temptation to surround Joey with a group of mouthy slackers in his own age demo. We’ve already seen Joey interacting with a gang of longtime friends in a coffee shop, and putting some palm trees outside the window and renaming the coffeeshop Griffith Perk isn’t going to fool anyone into believing that “Joey” is just “Friends” in L.A.

We only got brief glimpses of Joey’s working life on “Friends,” so why not change it up by centering the action on his various sets and auditions? For series from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to “NewsRadio” to “Sports Night,” the workplace has provided a rich vein of comic material to mine. Viewers know what Joey’s like with his friends; it would be fun, and, more importantly, different, to see him with his professional peers.

If they can make it there...
When it comes to “C.S.I.: New York,” producers should be careful not to stray too far from what people like about the original series. I gave “C.S.I.: Miami” a shot, but bailed after three or four episodes because it seemed to be trying, too aggressively, to distinguish itself from its source: where “C.S.I.” generally focuses on the cases without devoting too much screen time to the characters’ idiosyncrasies.

Sure, we know “C.S.I.”’s Sara Seidel is a brown-noser, Catherine Willows is an ex-stripper, and Gil Grissom is … a Vulcan, right? But “Miami”’s cast is constantly jockeying for our attention with their annoying and improbable character tics: the coroner talks to dead victims! The ballistics expert is a demure southern belle! The lead C.S.I. is a condescending jerk who delivers every single line as though he’s mentally appending the word “stupid” to it! And what’s with the pretentious names? “Calleigh”? “Horatio”? The almost-acceptable “Alexx” with the unnecessary additional silent “x”?

“C.S.I.: Miami” is like “C.S.I.” if it were set in a high-school drama club; everyone’s trying just a little too hard to seem special. One of the reasons “C.S.I.” has caught on (other than its “Survivor” lead-in) is that each episode is self-contained; we don’t have to keep any long-term story arcs straight in our minds. “C.S.I.: New York” should allow viewers multiple entry points: cases that don’t overstay their welcome, and a crew of investigators whose character traits are revealed to the audience gradually and organically in the course of their work.

Though it will be mightily tempting, producers should also avoid storylines “ripped from the headlines.” “Law & Order” and its various descendants have started leaning a bit too heavily on this crutch in recent years, but this season has been especially shameless. First, both original “L&O” and “Criminal Intent” did episodes this year that borrowed from the Jayson Blair scandal, and NBC has rerun last year’s “L&O” season finale, about a pedophilic celebrity who dangles his adopted child out a hotel window, at least five times to capitalize on Michael Jackson’s recent legal troubles.

For the most part, “C.S.I.” has wisely steered clear of such sensationalistic episodes à clef. Though the gritty setting of New York may lend itself better to fictionalized retellings of real crimes, the new “C.S.I.” should continue doing what its progenitor does best: building episodes around crimes with compelling forensic elements.

“C.S.I.: New York” and “Joey” will have definite advantages over much of the new shows in this fall’s TV lineup; if brand recognition wasn’t so beneficial for a new TV series, networks would have stopped dishing out spin-offs a long time ago. Here’s hoping their producers have learned the lessons of TV history, and create series that will hold up on their own merits, distinct from the series that spawned them.

Tara Ariano co-created and co-edits Fametracker.com and TelevisionWithoutPity.com.

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