15 Classic TV Shows That Would Never Be Made Today

Have you ever experienced this before? You’re watching one of your comfort shows from decades ago, something you remember fondly watching when you were younger and want to relive that same magic. All of a sudden, you come face-to-face with a horrific joke that no longer passes the vibe check. Everything from “Friends” to “The Simpsons” have jokes that aged terribly, but there’s a different kind of realization you might come to with certain programs. While some shows have singular episodes that no longer work, some series have central premises that no network or streamer would take a chance on today. 

Making a list of TV shows that would never be made today is pretty common, but many of these other lists have entries that just don’t make sense. Like how can you say that “South Park” couldn’t be made today when new episodes are currently getting made? There are also shows like “All in the Family,” where Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), is a bigot, but his bigotry is constantly a source of condemnation. People may say that “All in the Family” couldn’t work today, but in truth, it’s pretty woke. 

For this list, we wanted shows where their very identities couldn’t work today. The central ideas has to be either horrendously offensive or just plain doesn’t make sense. And maybe there will be a few surprises thrown into the mix for good measure. 

“Entourage” followed the exploits of movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his buddies clinging to his fame. It aired on HBO from 2004 to 2011, which was pretty much the perfect timeframe for its existence, as much of the humor simply wouldn’t fly today. You can blame the show not aging well on PC culture all you want, which series creator Doug Ellin has, but in a post-MeToo world, “Entourage” would have a hard time getting by. 

The show regularly dabbled in misogyny and homophobia, and one could argue the show satirized such attitudes. At the same time, it could also be argued the series didn’t go far enough in satirizing Hollywood at the time. This can be seen in the character of Harvey Weingard (Maury Chaykin), a thinly veiled parody of Harvey Weinstein. While he’d go on profanity-laden rants, the show never explored the rumors of sexual assaults that plagued him for years prior to the #MeToo movement. The show dabbled in too many -isms to really work today, and the satire didn’t go far enough to make it a true harbinger of what was to come.

For someone who didn’t grow up in the ’90s, it’s hard to express what a phenomenon “Jerry Springer” was. Springer’s show became so popular Hollywood gave him his own movie — “Ringmaster.” Today, his show seems like nothing but titillating exploitation; in other words, it’d probably make a good series on the shadiest part of YouTube.

Whereas something like “Dr. Phil” had the veneer of respectability (even though it wasn’t), “Jerry Springer” leaned into trash wholeheartedly. People came on to accuse one another of infidelity, often leading to brawls on-stage. Another common trope involved people learning their significant others were trans although the show often used wildly outdated terminology to refer to them as such. 

In the modern age, there’s still no shortage of people willing to humiliate themselves for 15 minutes of fame. But social media has made that easier than ever. Who needs Jerry Springer when you have the Hawk Tuah girl hocking a meme coin and scamming her loyal fans? “Jerry Springer” could seem downright quaint by comparison. 

“Twin Peaks” is an outlier on this list because it’s not that it was too offensive for today’s sensibilities. Far from it; the show, which came from the wonderful mind of the late, great David Lynch, seems too strange and singular to make it in the modern media landscape where every streaming service is reliant on rebooting anything remotely popular from the 1990s and 2000s. 

Yes, “Twin Peaks” got a revival of its own in 2017, but that’s only because it was grandfathered into nostalgic bliss. You couldn’t make “Twin Peaks” today because it seems highly unlikely anyone would take a chance on it. This is evident from Netflix turning down Lynch’s bonkers animated film, “Snootworld.” In his final years, Lynch also had a miniseries he hoped to bring to Netflix tentatively titled “Unrecorded Night.” The limited show would’ve cost $85 million, but the pandemic reportedly put it on hold and gradually died. There are still plenty of original shows out there if you know where to look, but “Twin Peaks” was the right show at the right time with the right visionary at the helm.

“Ironside” was a cop drama that debuted on NBC in 1967 and ran for eight seasons. It followed the adventures of Chief Robert T. Ironside (Raymond Burr) who was paralyzed from the waist down in the line of duty but becomes a consultant to continue solving various crimes. It was a pretty monumental show for the time period, coming out well before the Americans with Disabilities Act came into effect in 1990. “Ironside” proved individuals with disabilities could work and live full lives. 

The one wrinkle in “Ironside”  is that Burr himself wasn’t paralyzed. With greater awareness of the importance of representation, it’s unlikely such casting could fly these days. Bryan Cranston learned this first-hand in the 2017 film “The Upside,” where he played a man in a wheelchair and received derision from certain circles for taking a role that could’ve gone to a disabled actor. NBC even tried rolling its luck with “Ironside” in 2013 by rebooting the show, but it was canceled after only four episodes. The solution for this if someone really wanted another “Ironside” show would be to simply cast an actor in a wheelchair as Ironside, but logic doesn’t always come naturally to studio executives. 

Society’s obsession with true crime podcasts and docuseries can probably be traced back to the hit show, “To Catch a Predator.” The basic premise was an undercover sting operation would be set up to catch adult men trying to meet up with underage kids. Upon entering the house, host Chris Hansen would be there to ask some variation of, “What are you doing here?” 

Getting pedophiles locked up is undoubtedly a net good. However, in the years since “To Catch a Predator” went off the air (at least in part due to a Texas prosecutor getting caught messaging a 13-year-old boy and then fatally shooting himself) there have been questions of how effective something like this show can be. Does it tackle the more systemic issues of keeping predators away from children in the first place, or does it just make audiences feel good to see sick perverts get their just desserts? These are questions the new documentary, “Predators,” which debuted at Sundance 2025, seeks to answer. 

“Predators” questions why so many like to consume true crime content and how beneficial it is to actually helping people stay safe. As such, it’s probably for the best for “To Catch a Predator” to remain a relic of the past and leave the arrests to organizations that specialize in protecting kids.

“The Dukes of Hazzard” follows them good ol’ Duke boys — Bo (John Schneider) and Luke (Tom Wopat) — as they constantly run afoul of the law. Despite running for seven seasons from 1979 to 1985 and getting the big screen treatment in 2005, making such a property today seems like a fool’s errands due to the Duke boys driving around in the General Lee, adorned with an emblem of the Confederate flag on the roof. 

Such iconography is typically more seen as a hate symbol in this day and age. In 2015, Warner Bros. decided to stop selling General Lee merchandise, which makes the prospect of reviving the show all the less likely. Then again, Fort Liberty will go back to being called Fort Bragg, named after Confederate general Braxton Bragg, starting in March. The second Donald Trump term seems more inclined to celebrate the Confederacy rather than admonish it, so if Warner Bros. wants to be seen as anti-DEI, maybe “The Dukes of Hazzard” has a place in this world after all. 

“Hogan’s Heroes” is without question the most popular sitcom to take place in a Nazi POW camp. The show ran for six seasons and followed the misadventures of a group of Allied soldiers, led by Colonel Robert E. Hogan (Bob Crane) as he executes saboteur missions against the ever helpless German Colonel Wilhelm Klink (Werner Klemperer). 

While the Nazis on the show were portrayed as bumbling idiots (as they should be), it’s unlikely a POW camp-set comedy would fly today. Besides, making a show today about a war from 20 years ago means another “Hogan’s Heroes” would likely need to follow POWs during the United States’ invasion of the Middle East. That requires a far more nuanced perspective than just saying “Nazis are evil and dumb.” 

Only one original “Hogan’s Heroes” cast member is still alive, making any kind of legacy revival a moot point. A “Hogan’s Heroes” reboot was in the works in 2019 but never got much traction. It would’ve followed the children of the original “Hogan’s Heroes” characters as they embark on a global treasure hunt, so it seems even the creators of this proposed show knew it was best to get away from the POW camp. 

The original author of “M*A*S*H” may have hated Hawkeye (Alan Alda) and the TV series as a whole, but everyone else loved it. To this day, the series finale remains the most watched episode of television ever, as people wanted to see the conclusion of this hilarious yet somber series.

“M*A*S*H” understood what it was. There was ample levity, but it also knew when to get serious, which is why you never hear a laugh track while Hawkeye and the others are in the operating room. “M*A*S*H” may have been set during the Korean War, but it offered ample commentary on the Vietnam War, which America was entrenched in during the start of its run. Much like “Hogan’s Heroes,” the equivalent today would be a sitcom about doctor in the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which also just doesn’t feel right. “M*A*S*H” was the right show at the right time, and comedies about war don’t feel at home in the modern age. 

We might be stretching the definition of “classic show” by including “Bosom Buddies” on this list, but it did help launch Tom Hanks’ career. The show sees Hanks and Peter Scolari play two men who want to live at an affordable apartment building, but the catch is they only allow female tenants. Therefore, they pretend to be women to live there. 

The “dressing up as women” element was dropped in Season 2 when the men’s identities are revealed, but they can continue living at the building anyway. But “Bosom Buddies” couldn’t fly in its original form today due to greater awareness of trans rights. In its most basic form, the show even plays into conservative-based myths that men dress up as women in order to access women-only spaces. That’s not at all what it means to be trans. The central characters aren’t even drag performers, so the show couldn’t even lean into that angle to appeal to other circles. Call us woke all you want, but “Bosom Buddies” just couldn’t work today, and Tom Hanks himself would probably prefer if people ignored it. 

“The Honeymooners” is an incredibly influential sitcom, and it also could only exist in the 1950s. The show follows married couple Ralph (Jackie Gleason) and Alice (Audrey Meadows), as Ralph frequently gets into trouble with various harebrained schemes to get ahead in life. These days, the show’s probably best known for Ralph repeatedly threatening to send Alice “to the moon” (read: hit her so hard she goes to the moon). 

This kind of casual physical threat still appears in sitcoms. “The Simpsons” still uses one of its oldest gags of Homer strangling Bart, and Peter Griffin on “Family Guy” has shot his daughter Meg before. Maybe since those are cartoons the casual violence goes down easier. A man threatening to hit his wife just couldn’t fly today, and what’s even stranger is that it’s his catchphrase. When he says it, the audience laughs and applauds. The ’50s were weird. 

Jimmy Kimmel would probably love for everyone to forget he once co-hosted something called “The Man Show” on Comedy Central, which consisted of all things men would love, like women jumping on trampolines. You know, because there was never a show before that directly appealed to men before 1999. 

The best interpretation of “The Man Show” is that it skewered traditionally “male” values, but you’d have to dig long and hard to unearth any semblance of satire. Aside from its lewd portrayals of women, “The Man Show” also included Kimmel donning blackface, which he’s since had to apologize for. When Adam Carolla and Kimmel stepped down from hosting duties, Doug Stanhope and future leader of the manosphere Joe Rogan took on those duties, helping Rogan’s career substantially.

“The Man Show” might still work on certain subsections of the internet where men get irrationally angry anytime “Star Wars” adds a new female character. But for (hopefully) most, “The Man Show” remains an inexplicable artifact of what passed for entertainment in the early 2000s. 

Magic-based sitcoms had a real heyday in the 1960s with “Bewitched” and its lesser-talked-about contemporary, “I Dream of Jeannie.” The basic premise is that a man, Tony (Larry Hagman), ends up overseeing a magical genie, Jeannie (Barbara Eden), who answers at his every beck and call. Over five seasons, the two fall in love and ultimately get married, and it’s arguably the latter premise that led to the show’s demise. 

Jeannie may be 2,000 years old, but there’s clearly a disproportionate power dynamic at play. Jeannie, the woman, is always subservient to Tony, the man. Her falling in love with him feels less like a natural progression of the character and more like a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome. There’s also the matter of Jeannie being regularly sexualized, including walking around Tony in a rather revealing outfit. Jeannie largely has no ambition of her own and pretty much lives to serve the man in her life. Such a premise being part of a TV show today would surely be met with outcry. “Bewitched” would also likely have trouble airing today since that show sees a powerful witch dampening her own power to please a man. 

“F Troop” couldn’t be made today for a couple of reasons. For starters, the show’s about an Army outpost in the Wild West circa 1860s where they frequently encounter the indigenous people of the area. The first major issue is that many of the Native Americans on the show weren’t portrayed by Native Americans. Instead, you had the very much white Don Diamond playing a character named Crazy Cat.

There’s also the matter that we today know what was happening to indigenous populations throughout the 1860s and beyond. Their population significantly declined as white colonizers continued expanding westward. It was a total genocide, and it would undoubtedly leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth to see the two groups yucking it up together in a lighthearted sitcom. On a far less serious note, the decline of the Western over the decades means no one would probably want a TV show that satirizes elements of the genre in this day and age either. 

“Who’s the Boss?” has a similar yet opposite problem to “I Dream of Jeannie.” The sitcom follows ex-baseball player Tony Micelli (Tony Danza) now working as a live-in housekeeper to advertising executive Angela Bower (Judith Light). A good deal of humor stems from the gender reversal where the man is a housekeeper while the woman’s a breadwinner. There’s no reason why that dynamic should be seen as “odd” in today’s day and age, as there are plenty of female bosses in the world today (although still not enough). 

There’s also the matter of Tony and Angela inevitably forming a romantic connection, even though she’s his boss. It’s an unsavory power dynamic where it could be seen that the employer is taking advantage of someone in their employ. Alyssa Milano teased a “Who’s the Boss?” reboot in 2022, but it ended up not moving forward, which is probably for the best.

Just hear us out! “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was pure joy and inspired a generation of children to be kinder to one another. It taught kids how to resolve conflicts and demonstrate compassion for one another. Fred Rogers was simply the best, and his show is too kindhearted for today’s world. 

In 1969, Rogers testified in front of a Senate subcommittee to acquire funding for PBS. He offered a profound speech on the importance of kids having good role models that everyone needs to watch, and at the end, he got the funding. Can you imagine Mr. Rogers testifying in front of someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene to get PBS funded? That’s nothing to say of the conservative wing of online culture at large, which would probably denounce Mr. Rogers as being woke for daring to say that everyone is worthy of compassion. 

“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” couldn’t be made today because the world wouldn’t allow such a pure source of wonder to exist. But thank you for all the life lessons, Mr. Rogers. You were too good for this world.