'Shifting Gears' Shifts ABC's Streaming Audience To New Record in Just 7 Days

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Shifting Gears

Tim Allen plus situational comedy equals big audiences. In just one week, across Disney's owned properties, ABC, Hulu, Hulu on Disney+ and digital platforms, the first episode of Allen's new comedy Shifting Gears has garnered 17M multi-platform viewers. According to Deadline, for Disney, that's a 173% jump from the same-day audience of the series premiere. The debut marks ABC's strongest premiere since The Connors, the Roseanne spin-off/reboot. It's also ABC's most-watched streaming debut to date, according to Deadline. Joining Allen in the sitcom is Kat Dennings (2 Broke Girls), who plays his daughter, Riley. Daryl “Chill” Mitchell plays Stitch, Maxwell Simkins and Barrett Margolis play Dennings children, Carter and Georgia.

The official logline is as follows:

“Matt (Tim Allen) is the stubborn, widowed owner of a classic car restoration shop. When Matt’s estranged daughter and her teenage kids move into his house, the real restoration begins.”

Before 'Shifting Gears', Even Before 'Last Man Standing' There Was 'Home Improvement'

The cast of Home Improvement posing for a promo photo.

Back in 1991, a heartwarming sitcom called Home Improvement premiered. The show would run until 1999 and featured Allen as Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor. Allen's character hosted a home improvement show called Tool Time. Joined by Allen in the sitcom were Patricia Richardson, who played his wife Jill, and their three sons, Brad, Randy, and Mark, played by Zachery Ty Bryan, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Taran Noah Smith respectively. In addition to the family, Richard Karn played Al Borland, Tim's goofy co-host, and the always obscured-by-a-fence neighbor Wilson, played by the late Earl Hindman. The show will be available to stream on Netflix beginning in February.

Allen's next big sitcom would come 12 years later with Last Man Standing, where Allen played yet another dad, Mike Baxter. This time he's a father to three girls, rather than three boys, and literally embodies the Last Man Standing in a house where he feels like he's outnumbered. Last Man Standing ran for 9 seasons between 2011 and 2021. Now, there's less of a gap between this show and what seems to be Allen's next big hit, Shifting Gears.

Dennings spoke with Collider's Christina Radish, saying that the opportunity to work with Allen on a sitcom, "was like, 'Oh, my God, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.' So, that’s how it happened. I wished for it, and it happened." On actually working with Allen, Dennings says, "Tim and I have such a fantastic relationship that we can really balance each other out in all these scenes, and we know what to do with them, so that it’s still fun."

The first two episodes of Shifting Gears is available to stream on Hulu. Catch new episodes Wednesday's on ABC. Stay with Collider for the latest updates.