History TheOtherDarrin / LiveACtionTV

* The 1970s BBC drama series ''The Brothers'' replaced its ''male lead character'' Edward Hammond after the first series. Welsh Glyn Owen was replaced by Irish Patrick O'Connell, who has a completely different appearance and portrayed the character quite differently. Amazingly, the show survived this recasting and continued for six more series.

* Gary from ''Series/HiDeHi'' was played by Terence Creasy in Series 1, and by Creator/ChrisAndrews in all series afterwards. In the early days, Gary was nothing more than a LivingProp so it's doubtful that many viewers would've noticed the change for such an incredibly minor character.

** Diana Lambert is one of several actors who made multiple appearances in the series as different characters; in her first appearance, she played a customer credited as "the six-pound fox" (so named because her character bought a fox fur wrap deeply discounted to six pounds by Mrs. Slocombe, who had hoped to purchase the wrap herself).

* ''Series/Bread1986'' replaced actors for three of its major characters. Julie (Billy's girlfriend) was played by Caroline Milmoe for the first two seasons and Hilary Crowson from season 3 to 5. Joey was played by Peter Howitt from season 1 to 5 and Graham Bickley thereafter. Aveline was played by Gilly Corman from season 1 to 4 and Melanie Hill thereafter.

** A truly strange RoleEndingMisdemeanor situation instigated some craziness in 2023. Molly Lansing-Davis had been born on screen in 2005 and was played by infant and toddler actors, but she came down with SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome in 2009, and 10-year-old Haley Pullos took on the role, which she kept playing as the character aged into adolescence and young adulthood. Then in the May of 2023, it was announced that Pullos had been in a serious car accident, and a fill-in actress, Holiday Mia Kriegel, was introduced to play the part while Pullos was out (as it happened, Molly was in the middle of a major storyline where she found out she was infertile and decided to have a child with a surrogate mother). Then it was revealed that there had been open containers of alcohol and cannabis edibles found in Pullos' car after the crash, and she got charged with felony DUI. The show has remained tight-lipped on whether Pullos will ever return, but in the meantime, Kriegel's tenure stretched into July, before she was suddenly replaced by Brooke Anne Smith. This was a ''very'' controversial recasting among the show's fandom, since Smith was obviously much older than Molly is supposed to be (Smith was 39, while Molly's canonical age is 25), and didn't really look much like Pullos or even Kriegel, who both have black hair while Smith has light brown hair.[[note]]A weird sidelight in all this was the introduction of a new RecurringCharacter around the same time named Betty Rutherford, a shady woman posing as a nanny. Her portrayer, Ella Lentini, looked quite a bit like Pullos, and fans openly wondered why ''she'' hadn't been the one recast as Molly.[[/note]] Then after two more months, Molly got ''yet another'' surprise recast with Kristen Vaganos, who was much closer in age and looks to Pullos. That's four different actresses playing the character over four months! This led to jokes that 2023 would be remembered as "The Year of Four Mollys".

** Chris was recast after Series 1 and was played by Creator/PeterPolycarpou from Series 2-6, only for his first actor (David Cardy) to reprise the role from Series 7 onward.

* Nineties British sitcom ''Series/BirdsOfAFeather'', about two sisters coping together while their husbands were in prison, had two cast changes, in that both actors who played the husbands were replaced. Chris was recast from David Cardy to Creator/PeterPolycarpou for Series 2 up until Series 7, at which point, Darryl was Darrined from Creator/AlunLewis to Douglas [=McFerran=], while Chris was re-Darrined back into Cardy.