Tim Allen's Shifting Gears Pulls In Huge Audience For ABC, Rivaling Fellow Freshman Breakout High Potential Despite Mixed Reviews
Shifting Gears is performing well in its debut season. The new ABC series, which follows an auto shop owner (Tim Allen) finding himself living with his estranged daughter (Kat Dennings) and her kids, is the latest half-hour sitcom to star Allen. The actor has a history in the medium that includes the long-running series Home Improvement and Last Man Standing, both of which aired on ABC for the majority of their collective runs. Shifting Gears reviews have been mixed, earning it a score of exactly 50% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 4.0 out of 10.
Per Deadline, Shifting Gears has found a solid audience after debuting midseason on January 8. It has an average of 11.4 million viewers per episode in the seven-day window, which puts it in the Top 5 broadcast entertainment series for the 2024-2025 season overall alongside the ABC titles High Potential (13.73 million viewers per episode), which premiered in Fall 2024, and Will Trent (10.34 million viewers per episode) season 3, which premiered the day before Shifting Gears.
What This Means For Shifting Gears
Its Ratings Could Continue To Soar
Shifting Gears, which could very well see these numbers continue to climb as the season continues, is narrowing the gap between itself and High Potential, which starsKaitlin Olson as a single mother and cleaning lady who becomes an unlikely crime-solver. However, the fact that the latter series is an hourlong procedural means that the pair are essentially operating in different playing fields, though both are undeniably connecting well with audiences.
High Potential, which was created by Drew Goddard, has already been renewed for season 2 as of January.
It remains to be seen if the new show can maintain this level of audience through the end of its debut season. However, the Shifting Gears cast could be a good luck charm, asits leads are no strangers to longevity. Dennings was previously the star of the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls, which ran for six seasons between 2011 and 2017. Additionally, audiences also seem to be enjoying the show more than critics, awarding it with 62% on Rotten Tomatoes' Popcornmeter, a Fresh score which could help the show sustain these numbers.
Our Take On The Shifting Gears Ratings
The Show Has A Bright Future
Even if the sitcom simply maintains these numbers rather than raising them past High Potential by the end of the 2024-2025 season, it seems probable that Shifting Gears season 2 will be greenlit before long. The fact that it is already in the Top 5 shows of the season within a few episodes of its series premiere shows that Tim Allen's return to ABC is built to last.
Shifting Gears airs on ABC on Wednesdays at 8/7C.
Source: Deadline
Shifting Gears
- Release Date
- January 8, 2025
- Network
- ABC
- Directors
- John Pasquin
Cast
Tim AllenMatt
Riley
- Creator(s)
- Julie Thacker, Mike Scully
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