Tim Allen is making his return to the small screen in the 2025 TV schedule’s highly anticipated sitcom Shifting Gears. However, as critics share their takes on this new comedy from the beloved actor, it’s becoming clear many think this show doesn’t have the parts for the long haul. So, with that being said, let’s break down exactly what critics are saying about this new ABC comedy.
Overall, there has been quite a bit of excitement surrounding Shifting Gears. It stars two beloved actors, Tim Allen and Kat Dennings, and its premise – a comedy about a stubborn widowed restoration shop owner reconnecting with his estranged daughter – sounded like a winner. However, many reviews think the series falls a bit short.
For example, THR’s Daniel Fienberg explained that he “watched Shifting Gears thinking it was Last Man Standing without the guts to come right out and just be Last Man Standing.” Earlier in the review, he noted that the show feels like the sitcoms we've seen from Allen before, and there wasn’t much that shifted gears for him, as he wrote:
The title and premise of Shifting Gears seem to be about, well, shifting gears in your life and your attitude, but the two episodes sent to critics suggest little interest in giving viewers anything other than exactly what they want and expect. So if you have a hankering for a Tim Allen comedy in which a grouchy Boomer goes on rants about nothing in particular because everything in particular is wrong with kids today, Shifting Gears has you taken care of. If that sounds painful, your opinion isn’t likely to shift gears.
Over at IndieWire, Ben Travers also wasn’t on board with Shifting Gears. As the headline noted, he thought the show was “stuck idling.” He wrote at length about the various reasons he thought the show did not work and ultimately gave it a D+. To prove that opinion, he explained:
‘Shifting Gears’ has a very simple, very broad, very familiar premise — a grown child moves back home with her own young children — which should make it all the easier to deliver solid set-ups and punchlines. Instead, resources are devoted to Allen’s, oops, I mean Matt’s rants about whatever irritating peccadilloes he sees in today’s youth — and the rants aren’t that funny either.
Kelly Lawler of USA Today also wasn’t here for Shifting Gears. While she notes that she thought this show “would be a lot worse than it is,” she was by no means impressed. Comparing it to Last Man Standing by stating that Allen plays an “overwrought patriarch” with a daughter or two in both, she made it clear that this sitcom wasn't for her:
‘Gears’ (Wednesdays, 8 EST/PST, ★½ out of four), created by Mike Scully and Julie Thacker-Scully (‘The Simpsons’), is neither original nor exciting; It's an unchallenging and not very funny package of generational stereotypes and grating banter between Allen and Dennings. The two episodes made available for review feature dialogue so bland it could have been written by AI. They lack excitement in any way, but are not so achingly terrible they offend the senses.
However, she also explained that she’s not the biggest fan of the leading man and that people who do like Tim Allen’s movies and shows will probably enjoy this – as the headline said, she thinks this comedy is made “exclusively for Tim Allen lovers.” So, when it comes to Shifting Gears, mileage may vary.
To prove that, TV Line’s Dave Nemetz enjoyed the show a lot more than other critics, writing that “Tim Allen knows his niche.” And overall, according to this critic, the new ABC series does a fine job. While it’s not doing anything revolutionary, he did enjoy it:
We tune in to laugh, and Allen and Dennings deliver on that front as a sturdy comedy duo. No, this show doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel… but it does give that wheel a pretty decent restoration job.
Along the same lines, The LA Times’ Robert Lloyd explained that Shifting Gears explores themes of generational and political differences in ways that have been done for, well, generations. It’s not new, they’re not reinventing the wheel, but it also functions just fine, as he explained:
That there is nothing new to see here is not in the series’ disfavor. Political differences among close-quartered sitcom families go back at least as far as “All in the Family,” which had been off the air nearly a decade when Dennings was born; adult children moving in with parents or parents moving in with children (see “Lopez vs Lopez,” currently in its third season on NBC) is an old theme on television, which loves to pack as many generations into a three-walled set as possible. Formulas are formulas because they give consistent, reliable, unsurprising results.
Overall, the general consensus is that Shifting Gears is by no means one of the best sitcoms of all time. However, while some can’t seem to stand it, others find it entertaining and worth about 20 minutes plus ads of your time.
As I mentioned, mileage may vary on this one. So, if you’d like to make up your own mind about Tim Allen and Kat Dennings’ new comedy, you can watch Shifting Gears tonight, January 8, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC or you can stream it the next day with a Hulu subscription.
