Notable TV shows about fathers and sons

Frasier Crane started as part of the Cheers ensemble, but then Kelsey Grammer’s character got a spinoff. He returns to his native Seattle, and his father, Martin, comes to live with him. While Frasier and his brother, Niles, are somewhat snobby intellectuals, Martin is a decidedly different kind of guy. This dynamic is a big part of what helped make Frasier one of the best sitcoms ever. Plus, it has now been rebooted, and the reboot is about Frasier and his son, Freddy.

Fathers and Sons was a very unsuccessful 1980s sitcom. It starred Hall of Fame football player turned actor Merlin Olsen as a father who coaches his sons’ baseball team. The show was canceled after four episodes. However, it’s also literally called Fathers and Sons, so we wanted to include it.

While the father doesn’t get name-dropped in this successful sitcom, the sons make the cut. Fred McMurray, one of the early movie stars to make the move to TV stardom, plays Steve Douglas, a widower raising his, well, three sons. Of course, when your sitcom aired for 12 years and 380 episodes, and the show isn’t animated, changes are needed. The oldest son, Mike, married his fiancée and was written off the show, so the youngest son, Chip’s friend, Ernie, is adopted by Steve. Otherwise, they would have had to change the title.

Ah, ‘90s cartoons. Goof Troop only aired for three months in 1992, but it produced 78 episodes. The show focused on the iconic Disney character Goofy as a single dad caring for his son Max. A couple of years later, the show was adapted into the film A Goofy Movie, followed in 2000 by the direct-to-video sequel An Extremely Goofy Movie, which is considered the Goof Troop series finale.

The blueprint of the mild, somewhat dull family sitcom can be found in Father Knows Best. Starting as a radio show, when Father Knows Best moved to television, the edges were sanded down even further. While Jim Anderson’s wife, Margaret, remains a voice of reason, Jim is also a calm, collected voice of reason. The title, which was somewhat wry in the radio show, was taken literally. Given that the show managed to run for 203 episodes, evidently, it worked.

A lot is going on in King of the Hill. Hank Hill is the main character, but the supporting characters have their own storylines, and Hank is dealing with work and with his friends. Ultimately, though, the primary driving force of storylines on King of the Hill is Hank worrying that his son Bobby “ain’t right.” Plus, through Hank’s relationship with his dad Cotton, fathers and sons play a key role in the long-running FOX cartoon.

Sometimes, Home Improvement is about Tim “The Toolman” Taylor not doing right by his wife, Jill, until he gets sage advice from his neighbor Wilson. Sometimes, it is about Tim’s feud with Bob Vila, but rarely. Much of Home Improvement, as a family sitcom centered on the patriarch of the family, involves Tim as a father to his three sons, Brad, Randy, and Mark. Sure, eventually, Brad and Randy were basically off the show, but Mark became a goth, so that shouldered the load.

Sure, it’s a remake of a British sitcom, but Sanford and Son is the more famous version of the two. Mostly, that’s because of the Sanford of the title. With all due respect to Lamont, Fred Sanford is the star of the show. Played indelibly by Redd Foxx, Fred is a catchphrase-spouting junk dealer always primed for “the big one” to end his life.

Robert Townsend has had an interesting career, and one thing he did was star in one of the first WB sitcoms, which he also co-created. While it would end up being called The Parent ‘Hood, Townsend initially wanted to call it Father Knows Nothing, a riff on Father Knows Best. Basically, Townsend plays a father who comes to believe his kids haven’t gotten enough tough love growing up in the upper middle class, so he sets out to do so, including for his two sons among his four children.

Many shows about fathers and sons are about a man dealing with young children. As Frasier taught us, that doesn’t have to be the case. In Raising Dad, a widower is raising his two young daughters, but he’s helped by his own father, who lives with them. While Raising Dad only ran one season, it had a notable cast. Once again, Bob Saget played a widower, but whoever cast the kids nailed it because they chose Kat Dennings and Brie Larson.

Succession became a massive hit built upon the professional and personal machinations of the Roy family, plus a couple of others in the mix. We must shout out Shiv, Logan Roy’s only daughter, and her husband, Tom, and Cousin Greg. Of course, with Logan, Kendall, and Roman (plus Connor) in the mix, the “fathers and sons” of it all are at the forefront of Succession.

In many ways, Arrested Development has a lot in common with Succession , only it’s funnier (and also got decidedly worse as it went on). Originally a FOX show, the story of the Bluth family was a cult comedy classic. The action sets off when George Bluth, breadwinner and family leader, is sent to prison, leaving everybody else to fend for themselves. That includes the ostensible lead, Michael Bluth, who himself has a son in George Michael.

Sure, at the forefront of Two and a Half Men , we found Charlie Sheen…and then Charlie Sheen’s off-screen behavior…and then Ashton Kutcher replacing Charlie Sheen on the show. However, we can’t forget that the premise of the show was that Alan, Charlie’s brother, and Alan’s son, Jake, moved into Charlie’s Malibu house. Then, Angus T. Jones left the show and somehow was replaced by Amber Tamblyn. Also, the show would end with creator Chuck Lorre having a piano dropped on him. So yeah, maybe Two and a Half Men got away from fathers and sons a bit, but it was key there for a while.

At the tail end of the “Let’s give every successful standup a sitcom” era, Christopher Titus got into the mix. He turned his standup routine about his fraught family life into a show, though some of the details were different. In the show, Christopher Titus is a bit more immature and has a custom car shop. What remains in the mix is Christopher’s father, Ken, played with gruff vigor by Stacy Keach. “Papa” Titus has a vibe of “What if you really felt like Archie Bunker would take a swing at you,” and looms over the life of Christopher and his half-brother Dave.

Back in the days when Westerns ran forever, Bonanza ran longer than most. It was on the air from 1959 until 1973, producing a whopping 431 episodes. The show focused on the Cartwright family, who run the Ponderosa Ranch. Ben Cartwright is the patriarch of the family, but the thrice-widowed rancher has his three sons helping him at the Ponderosa, each born of one of his three different wives. Eventually, Pernell Roberts, who played the eldest son, Adam, would leave the show, but you can guess what happened late in the run of Bonanza. Yep, Ben adopted another kid, bringing the teenage Jamie into the family for the last three seasons.