The first look at ABC’s Shifting Gears teases a “bumpy” ride for Tim Allen and Kat Dennings‘ estranged onscreen relationship.
ABC released a trailer for the upcoming sitcom on Wednesday, November 20, with Dennings, 38, and Allen’s complicated father-daughter dynamic on display.
“Is that my GTO? I built that 15 years ago and somebody stole it,” Allen’s character Matt says in the clip as Dennings’ Riley gets out of the car. “And there’s the thief!”
Shifting Gears follows widowed father Matt and his estranged daughter, Riley, as they find themselves living together and working to repair their relationship.
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“I’m crawling home because I’m broke,” Riley explains in the clip after moving back home with her kids. “I need a place to stay until I figure out what the rest of my life looks like.”
Later in the sneak peek, Matt recalls his rocky relationship with Riley, saying, “I asked if you locked that back door, you looked back at me and you gave me a double bird.”
Riley jokes in response, “I was 18 — the double bird is how I ended all of our conversations.”
In addition to Dennings and Allen, 71, Shifting Gears also stars Seann William Scott, Daryl “Chill” Mitchell, Maxwell Simkins and Barrett Margolis.
The ABC series comes three years after Allen’s previous sitcom, Last Man Standing, wrapped its nine-season run. Before Last Man Standing, Allen was known for his role as Tim “The Toolman” Taylor on the ABC sitcom Home Improvement, which ran from 1991 to 1999. (Dennings, meanwhile, has a history with network TV, playing Max in CBS’ sitcom 2 Broke Girls from 2011 to 2017.)
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“The word that keeps me alive is ‘grateful.’ I love what I do. I get far more enjoyment out of entertaining people than anything monetary,” Allen exclusively told Us Weekly in 2020. “I love the live audience we have. I tell them every night, ‘This is old-school stuff, what television and broadcast started with.’ I don’t know the future, but this [show] is rare.”
He added: “We did the same thing as we did with Home Improvement. It’s all about the relationships — we don’t get into topical stuff. But [now], I’ve just got girls, so you see how a man differs in his perspective when he has so many strong women around him. We never make fun [of each other]. It’s an affectionate family. I like the fact that we honor and make fun — at the same time — marriage, institution, kids, babies, people. But in the same way, we honor it. We’re not being snarky about it.”
Shifting Gears premieres on ABC Wednesday, January 8, at 8 p.m. ET before streaming the next day on Hulu.
