Actor and comedian Tim Allen could soon return to ABC for a third time.
The network has reportedly green-lighted a pilot for a new multi-camera sitcom tentatively called Shifting Gears. The plot features Allen as Matt, the “stubborn, widowed owner of a classic car restoration shop,” which would be extremely on-brand for the grunting car enthusiast from Michigan.
“When Matt’s estranged daughter and her teenage kids move into his house, the real restoration begins,” the pilot’s official logline reads. It’s ABC’s first pilot order of the season.
Allen is on board to serve as executive producer for pilot as well, which will also be written and executive produced by Mike Scully and Julie Thacker Scully, who both worked on The Simpsons.
The project comes three years after the end of Allen’s Last Man Standing, which was canceled by ABC in 2017 and picked up by Fox, where it ran for three more seasons. Allen’s fans blamed the cancellation on Hollywood bias against conservatives; in the show, Allen played an executive at a Colorado-based sporting goods store chain who was raising his three daughters with Christian values. ABC pulled the plug months after Allen claimed that being a Republican in Hollywood is “like 1930s Germany.”
“You gotta be real careful around here, you know,” he said on Jimmy Kimmel Live. “You’ll get beat up if you don’t believe what everybody believes.”
Last Man Standing executive producers Marty Adelstein, Becky Clements, Richard Baker, and Rick Messina have also signed on to Shifting Gears, and the pilot will also be produced by Last Man Standing studio 20th Television.
In the ’90s, ABC also ran Allen’s popular sitcom Home Improvement, which was set in the Detroit area.
In the meantime, Allen has also starred and executive produced the Disney+ spinoff series The Santa Clauses, and Allen has continued to provide the voice acting for Buzz Lightyear in Disney’s Toy Story movies.
Despite railing against “wokeness” and “cancel culture” in recent years, Allen seems to be doing just fine.
