Sesame Street is such a strong leader that it inspires rivals and hurts its own viewership.
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation precipitated a host of forensic science shows involving (to quote the show) "beautiful people doing high-tech crime work", even to the point that shows not inherently about forensics now spend more time on the subject (e.g. the medical examiner on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit).
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation itself was inspired by an earlier wave of forensic-science documentaries, on channels like Discovery and Court TV.
The former always has dramatic lighting, bombastic music, Commercial Break Cliffhangers and a huge cash jackpot. Even stalwarts like Wheel of Fortune have found ways to offer a $1,000,000 prize.
The latter which tend to always have a blunt English guy, a sympathetic woman, and some third wheel, most likely a 'cool' guy.
The heavily character-driven, strangers-in-a-strange-land suspense formula of LOST inspired plenty of other shows, such as Invasion, Jericho, Heroes, Surface, and Threshold. Many of which were cancelled before they barely even began to delve in their Myth Arc. Coincidentally, there is a Lost episode titled "Follow the Leader."
After Lost's finale, a slew of new shows have started claiming to be "the next Lost" in order to round up the Lost fans looking for something new to watch. Flash Forward, V-2009, and The Event have both tried rather unsuccessfully to take Lost's place and new programs Stargate Universe, Riverworld, and Terra Nova are making the attempt as well.
The concept was sent up in a Mad TV skit. "You'll be asking yourself questions like, 'Who's the girl with the glasses, and why does she have scales on her leg?'"
Lost was blatantly copied (in the vein of an Asylum film) by 2010's "Dark Island". A science team (totally not the freighties) is sent to deal with zombies and a SMOKE MONSTER on a mysterious island.
JJ Abrams had already created a fair amount of the concept with his earlier Alias.
This goes all the way back to The Prisoner, and maybe even before.
One might argue the Friends was one of the ensemble Sitcoms inspired by Seinfeld. As George says in one scene set in Monk's coffee shop, "Every sitcom today just has four morons sitting around telling each other how bad their day was." Another would be Mad About You which co-creator Paul Reiser pitched to NBC as "Seinfeld, but Married".
Among the Friends-inspired: Partners, a rather similar show about the lives, loves, and careers of 20somethings; Coupling (the British Friends); and later possibly How I Met Your Mother.
This is an odd case, as three of the imitators—VR Troopers, Masked Rider and Big Bad Beetleborgs—were all made by Saban as a way to leech off Power Rangers, which they also made. Masked Rider was a total flop and the other two were only mildly successful.
Beetleborgs absolutely TROUNCED Power Rangers in ratings and toy sales for both seasons it aired, and was only canceled due to exorbitantly high production costs and a lack of additional source footage. Justin got introduced so Power Rangers could leech off the success of its own imitator; this didn't work so well.
Disney is actually quite the repeat offender. Apparently it comes written into all of their female tweenage stars' contracts that they will get to release a high-profit CD of cookie-cutter bubblegum pop music within two years of the show's inception, complete with overpriced tie-in merchandise. For examples, see Hilary Duff, Hannah Montana, and The Cheetah Girls.
Before that was Annette Funicello and Hayley Mills, in The Sixties. "Tall Paul" or "We Belong Together", anyone?! Uncle Walt himself began the whole shpiel, to capitalize on the success of Ricky Nelson.
Almost every actress to come from Disney will be the Hilary Duff or Miley Cyrus model while looking like a previous star to boot! Nicole Anderson is a clone of Demi Lovato, who along with Selena Gomez, is a Vanessa Hudgens lookalike. Tiffany Thornton, Chelsea Staub, and Bridgit Mendler are ringers for Ashley Tisdale (who is a Hilary Duff lookalike), and so forth. The Ultimate clone is Debby Ryan, who is basically Miley Cyrus with Selena Gomez's facial features.
Despite being cancelled years ago, Jackass still has copies around, including Dirty Sanchez, Crazy Monkey, Rad Girls, and the Finnish series Extreme Duudsonit (which actually came before Jackass).
Even the stars of Jackass have started to clone their own show, with Steve-O and Pontius' "Jackass, but with animals" show Wildboyz and Bam Margera's "Jackass, but a reality show" Viva La Bam.
Some of the Jackass guys helped produce an English language version of Extreme Duudsonit - which they list as the primary influence for Jackass - for an American audience. The resulting show - called The Dudesons - was cancelled by Spike TV after only a couple of episodes, mostly because people didn't watch it because they thought it was a spineless Finnish Jackass clone.
Jackass itself was derived in part from the character off Super Dave Osborne, a parody of 1970s stuntmen like Evel Kneivel, played by comedian Bob Einstein. Einstein himself detests Jackass, pointing out in this interview that Jackass is tragically easy to imitate, while the stunts he pulled were a lot harder for viewers to copy.
The X-Files inspired a number of series featuring alien invasions and supernatural hoohah, such as Dark Skies.
The success of The X-Files mythology perhaps also inspired series, such as 24 and Lost, that used serialized storylines, which in turn led to more serialized thriller shows such as Prison Break, Kidnapped, Vanished, Reunion, and Heroes, along with a few that also borrowed the alien invasion premise as well: Invasion, Surface, and Threshold. Most of these series failed due to people being unable (or unwilling) to keep up with so many different ongoing stories — and also due to generally being not very good.
There were tons of shows in Japan of this type long before X-Files. In 1964, we have Ultra Q, greatly involving Kaiju. Then, in 1968, two series: Operation Mystery (probably the most like X-Files out of the three) and Mighty Jack (the movie was lampooned in MST3K). All 3three are made by the same company.
While the degree to which Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was inspired by/ripped off Babylon 5 is controversial (to say the least), there is less doubt that the former's "Dominion War" arc was inspired by the latter's intricate Myth Arc (although only the most rabid partisans of Babylon 5 would claim that Deep Space Nine ripped it off outright). The B5 myth arc was in turn inspired by story arcs used in foreign television series, and combining it with a long-time comic-book fan's love of continuity to take the concept Up to Eleven.
The success of the pithy, sarcastic Judge Judy spawned a whole slew of pithy, sarcastic judge shows: Judge Mathis, Judge Joe Brown, Playboy Channel's Judge Julie etc. Even the venerable The People's Court replaced Judge Wapner with a sarcastic, saucy Latina (after brief stints by former New York Mayor Ed Koch and Judge Judy's husband). To be fair, Jerry Sheindlin was a judge in his own right.
The People's Court revival was originally planned as a vehicle for Lance Ito, who wisely declined.
It also had an influence on the revival of Doctor Who, although Rose did not engage in any roundhouse kicks.
It also helped kick off a revival of vampire movies, particularly Underworld.
Merlin is quite an astonishingly direct emulation of the premise and format of Smallville, to the point where most of the characters are even expys of the parent show's cast. Not that that's to say it's a bad show, just that it's clearly following the leader.
The show Sliders became rather sad in its third season, as it started following any leader that presented itself, with episodes that were little more than cheap ripoffs of the movies Twister, Nightmare on Elm Street, Tremors, Jurassic Park, and The Island of Dr. Moreau.
After the publication of The World Without Us, we've had not one, but two TV adaptations, released within three months of each other: Life After People and Aftermath: Population Zero.
There were so many similarities to Cold Squad when Cold Case debuted that the makers of the former took the latter to court.
Mythbusters inspired a number of popular science shows and launched the Experiment Show genre. Fans complain that many of its decendents, like Brainiac: Science Abuse, simply don't match it in terms of quality. Or explosions. Or, for that matter, quality of explosions.
Monty Python's Flying Circus inspired many an inferior imitator (although to be fair the original set an extremely high standard.) Some were pretty good: The Kids in the Hall was an excellent comedy.
Anytime a particular weapon or design in Robot Wars became really successful it would be heavily copied in later seasons. Some examples;
TRACIE from season 1 was designed to run both ways up. The feature caught on and was used by a lot of robots in later wars including Tornado and SMIDSY.
Flippers, which briefly became something of a Game Breaker until people worked out how to deal with them. First used by Recyclopse in season 1, but made really popular by 1: Cassius (Recyclopse's successor) which used its flipper to right itself when turned over (this later became known as the self-righting mechanism, or SRIMECH) and 2: Chaos 2, winner of the 3rd and 4th season which had a very powerful flipper (and also was the first to flip another robot over the fence).
The SRIMECH itself; while originated as an Improbable Use of a Weapon (many robots used flippers, or other weapons), some later robots had separate self-righters that did not double as weapons.
Crushers, first introduced by Razer in the second wars though these didn't start to catch on until the 5th season when the weight limit was increased.
Spinning discs, first used by Hypno-Disc in the 3rd wars and produced heavy amounts of damage, however imitators rarely managed to succeed at this.
The revival of Doctor Who has led to attempts at bringing back several other shows, including Survivors and Rentaghost, as well as to the recreation of the "Saturday evening drama" slot, evidenced by Primeval.
And in America, it hasn't brought back anything, it's simply added to the long-running "Friday night Skiffy" slot which has been going for at least 15 years...around the time the Saturday evening drama seemed to go away for a bit in England.
It also lead to a string of TV shows in which classic British heroes were reinvented (Robin Hood, Merlin, Sherlock, etc). Like Doctor Who, some of these shows have been well-received. Others, not so much.
Degrassi: The Next Generation was such a runaway hit in its US broadcast on the cable network Noggin that the channel's teen programming block, The-N, was spun off into its own channel. The-N has spent its entire existence making (or getting the rights to) shows that repeat the formula: a Soap OperaDysfunction Junction of teenage (or slightly older) Star-Crossed Lovers whose love is threatened by either No Going Steady or a Love Triangle, In a World where Adults Are Useless and a Family Unfriendly Aesop is around every corner, and everything changes constantly. The-N even marketed them this way, with Degrassi actors guest-starring in them and Cross Over commercials with characters from multiple shows. None of them gained the mega-popularity of Degrassi. They ranged from South of Nowhere, (DegrassimeetsBeverly Hills 90210...in America!), which managed a cult following, to Whistler (Degrassimeets watered-down Twin Peaks), which was poorly promoted and barely noticed outside of Canada, to Beyond The Break (DegrassimeetsBaywatch, complete with a former Baywatch actor), which was exactly as cheesy and ridiculous as expected.
Part of the reason for the clones not getting better than cult status may be that the Degrassi writers were beginning to get weary with their creation, and doubly weary with imitations of it. The Best Years, a clone created by the head of the Degrassi writing staff, was full of Take That against Degrassi, and the Cross Over commercials quickly changed from grimly earnest to Adam Westing.
Even Cartoon Network is getting in on the action, with The Othersiders (based on Ghost Hunters), Dude, What Would Happen...? (based on MythBusters), Survive This (from the creator of and based on Survivorman), and Brainrush (based on Cash Cab). Curiously, all of these shows are live-action.
And they're all Discovery shows. We've reached a network level of Follow The Leader!
The History Channelhas a tendency to air programs similar to whatever blockbuster movie is sweeping the world. Indiana Jones is big this year? Here's specials about real-life treasure hunters and lost civilizations. The Da Vinci Code is popular? Have some documentaries about religious conspiracies and apocrypha. A disaster movie? We've got stuff that examines if the premise is plausible, as well as showcasing a few other possible apocalypses they might use for the next movie. Hitler rarely gets any airtime nowadays, although some might prefer at least some variety in the station again.
Britannia High is just High School Musical except, as the name suggests, set in Britain. It FARED rather badly - so badly in fact that even among its target demographic, it lost in the ratings war to Antiques Roadshow.
USA released Psych, a series about a hyperobservant amateur who solves crimes by pretending to have psychic powers. Shortly after it became a hit, CBS released The Mentalist, a series about a hyperobservant solves crimes by pretending to have psychic powers. In fairness, the show is a lot angstier.
One episode of Psych actually namechecked The Mentalist referring to it as a "carbon copy", and Shawn himself is a fan of the show, though he prefers people not confuse him with that fake psychic.
Another episode has Shawn saying that he has an idea about a psychic show & they should pitch it to CBS...
USA also released Burn Notice, a series about a small group of quirky ex-special operatives who use their skills to help out the little guy. Shortly after it became a hit, TNT released Leverage, a show about a small group of quirky ex-criminals who use their skills to help out the little guy.
It's worth noting that the Leverage page used to have "Spiritual Successor" listed on it with no less than 4 examples, and both the Burn Notice and Leverage pages compare the shows to The A-Team.
Not sure how it goes in the States, but in Australia, there seems to be a legal requirement for reviewers to describe Burn Notice as "The A Team for grownups'".
There's now a surge in intelligence community comedies (Covert Affairs, Chaos), which according to the LA Times was started by Burn Notice.
After Caiga Quien Caiga became famous, "Los Raporteros" began fashioning themselves after Mario and co., with black suits, black glasses, an edgier song ("Como Estamos Hoy, Eh", replacing the softer and more rhytmical "Abarajame La Bañera") and more controversial lyrics.
The success of Gran Hermano prompted a wave of Argentinian reality TV shows, including Solos en la Casa, El Bar and Survivor Operación Robinson.
The success of La Niñera prompted more Argentinian remakes of American TV shows, including "Amas De Casa Deseperadas (Desperate Housewives)", "¿Quién es el Jefe? (Who's the Boss?)" and the remake that was better than the original: "Casados Con Hijos (Married... with Children)"
The success of Rebelde Way prompted more Argentinian tween shows like Patito Feo, Casi Angeles and Floricienta Also this, combined with the success of High School Musical, prompted the Argentinian remake of that movie.
After Perdona Nuestros Pecados got canned, a slew of imitators tried to take its place. However, most of them missed the point and mutated into talk shows. Only one of them, Ran 15, actually does what PNP used to do.
100% Lucha was created to fill the void after the cancellation of Titanes en el Ring.
Ghost Hunters inspired a wave (different from the wave of paranormal slasher horror movies) about paranormal investigations. Even the History channel got into the act. Your Mileage May Vary as to the quality of any of them.
Such shows include Most Haunted, Ghost Adventures, Destination Truth, and Ghost Lab as well as aborted shows like A Haunting and Paranormal Cops
It was unheard of to tape a sitcom in front of a live audience until the success ofI Love Lucy.
Aside from the fact that it wasn't taped (it was filmed), the production of "I Love Lucy" all but innovated everything you'll see in every sitcom since. The fact that it was filmed is what preserves it as the oldest television product that most Americans have ever seen, since it avoided the pitfalls of using videotape which would be wiped and reused later (since it was very expensive, and many networks were wiping videotape into the 1980s), or only existing today in the form of crude kinescopes (where a motion picture camera was pointed at a television monitor) that have little replay value today.
The raging success that was High School Musical was followed by a slew of easily-marketable Disney Channel movies—often featuring the channel's newest stars (Ashley Tisdale, Corbin Bleu, the Jonas Brothers etc). Meanwhile, Nickelodeon tried to get into the act with Spectacular!, a musical movie about a choir (who, for a change, performed "Eye of the Tiger") who failed because their leader insisted on doing the same old routines. The decision to cast Tammin Sursok (a soapie star best known in Australia) may not have been the greatest idea...
Also MTV made the musical The American Mall. The less said about it the better.
You can also follow a very straight line connecting American Idol (specifically, when after a few seasons it became largely beholden to the voting whims of tween girls) to High School Musical to Glee.
And from Glee to other musical movies such as Joyful Noise and shows like Smash.
The success of Dirty Jobs and Deadliest Catch on Discovery Channel spawned a host of interesting/dangerous jobs Reality TV shows like Ice Road Truckers (History Channel), two about extreme loggers, one about lobstermen (although that might be the originator since a special about lobstermen was essentially a test run for Catch) and Swords, which is about sword fishermen.
Perhaps attributable to the success of Monk, a lot of "quirky investigative genius solves crimes" shows have popped up of late: Psych (the guy is a fake psychic), The Mentalist (the guy is a former fake psychic), Lie to Me (the guy is a Living Lie Detector), Bones (quirky forensic scientist), Raines (the guy is haunted by hallucinations of the murder victims until he solves the case), Body of Proof (Insufferable Genius medical examiner), Castle (the guy is a wisecracking mystery novelist), and arguably to a lesser extent Dexter (the guy is himself a serial killer) and Pushing Daisies (the guy can bring the dead back to life).
The Living Lie Detector aspect of Lie to Me, to wit seeing if people are lying via micro-expressions and word choice, has already been used in NCIS Los Angeles. Something similar was used in a memorable scene in the film The Negotiator, long before Monk aired.
The protagonist of the new Body of Proof on ABC has been criticized for basically being a combination of House (brilliant doctor with mild pain problems who is usually right) and Temperance Brennan of Bones (quirky forensic scientist with poor social skills).
The success of Twilight may have led to The Vampire Diaries being produced for television. (It's a preexisting franchise example, since it's based on a series of books that preceded Twilight.)
It may have also influenced the MTV show Teen Wolf, based on an eighties film of the same name. While the original movie was a comedy starring Michael J. Fox, the show has "a greater emphasis on romance, horror and werewolf mythology" and has a lead that more closely resembles Taylor Lautner.
Survivorman was about survival expert Les Stroud being dumped into the wilderness and trying to make his way to civilization before a Rescue Chopper comes to him in a given period of time. Man Vs Wild features survival expert Bear Grylls being dumped into the wilderness and trying to make his way to civilization. There were several differences between the two shows, such as Bear's camera crew vs. Les toting around several dozen pounds of cameras, and Les pragmatic approach to Bear's more extreme version. M v W also stages situations for Bear to demonstrate unlikely or worst-case techniques. These points are explained in more detail on both pages.
Life After People became the highest rated program in the history of The History Channel when it aired in January 2008. Just a few months later, The National Geographic Channel aired Aftermath: Population Zero which was practically the exact same show. Both shows are practically the television adaptation of the explosively popular book "The World Without Us," published in 2007.
Food Network has started making a large number of culinary-themed reality shows where one contestant is eliminated per show (or per round, in self-contained shows), a la American Idol. In addition, they now have a new show called Chefs vs. City, which is basically single legs of The Amazing Race with culinary-themed challenges, only two teams, in a single U.S. city, and the prize is "bragging rights."
It seems more than likely that the remake of V was inspired by the success of the remake of ''Battlestar Galactica.
As well as the remakes of The Bionic Woman and Knight Rider, though those didn't do so well.
And Stargate Universe, the cancellation of many of these series has ineveitably lead to the death of the Science Fiction Genre on TV.
Desperate Housewives also inspired a series of reality series about actual housewives and their social circles called Real Housewives (of Orange County, Atlanta, etc.). Most of them run on the Rule of Drama.
Jerseylicious on Style is an obvious copy of Jersey Shore. In general there have been a lot of New Jersey-related reality shows since Jersey Shore became incredibly popular.
The Osbournes pretty much jump-started the "everyday lives of celebrities" series of reality shows albeit mostly with B- to C-list tabloid fodder. It was followed by Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Living Lohan, etc. Your Mileage May Vary on whether this is a good thing or not.
It isn't. There have been whispers of a "reality show curse," and it isn't entirely unfounded. Almost every celebrity couple who has done a domestic reality show a la The Osbournes or Newlyweds has split up (only the original Ozzy and Sharon are still together.)
After American Pickers took off, various shows about finding/selling old stuff suddenly emerged, such as Pawn Stars and Auction Kings.
Top Gear. 3 overseas series for the official count, and several more with the same but different names.
Pawn Stars has inspired a host of imitators related to antiques and valuable artifacts:
Other pawn shop shows, such as TLC's Pawn Queens, which is essentially a Distaff Counterpart of Pawn Stars, and TruTV's Hardcore Pawn, focusing on Detroit pawnbroker/scumbag Les Gold and his sleazy family;
Shows revolving around the purchasing of goods kept in storage lockers, like Auction Hunters and Storage Wars;
Shows where merchants visit ordinary people and buy things that seem like worthless junk but can be resold at higher prices, such as American Pickers and its Canadian Spin-OffCanadian Pickers.
And now, A&E has already launched Duck Dynasty already, with Barter Kings coming really soon.
It's taken a while but five years after it's launch we're beginning to see Mad Men clones in the form of BBC 2's The Hour*
As opposed to the CBC's The Hour, which is totally different
, ABC's Pan Am (which could also be called Mad MenON A PLANE!), and NBC's The Playboy Club. These shows have the benefit of being released while their originator is on hiatus.
The success of Weeds has led Showtime to do a number of very similar shows with the same base (acclaimed actress stars in show about normal person with a dilemma), such as Nurse Jackie (Weeds with prescription drugs), The Big C (Weeds with cancer) and The United States Of Tara (Weeds with multiple personality disorder). In fact, this seems to be most of their series output.
The Bachelor touched off a slew of dating shows. Then Joe Millionaire came along and tweaked the formula, so in addition to the progenitor, we have about a million versions with a slight twist (he's not rich, he's average-looking, he's a geek, et cetera).
Colombian telenovelaSin tetas no hay paraíso (There Is No Paradise Without Breasts) started the trend, apart from a remake with a bigger budget and a movie, of Darker and Edgier soaps in Latin Amerca (such as El Capo, El Cartel de los Sapos). These usually have a smaller duration, and are focused on drug lords, prostitution, corrupted politicians and being pretty much a soap disguised as a "serious drama".
The huge success of Saved by the Bell led to NBC executives eventually ordering an entire line of copies, including California Dreams. It eventually killed cartoons on Saturday Mornings for the network.
After Hot In Cleveland became a runaway hit, TV Land has been attempting to have lightning strike twice, creating a string of three-camera sitcoms featuring classic sitcom and Film veterans. Retired at 35 (George Segal, Jessica Walter), Happily Divorced (Fran Drescher, Rita Moreno), The Exes (Kristen Johnson, Wayne Knight, Donald Faison). It's contributed to TV Lands Network Decay(instead of showing classic sitcoms, it shows new sitcoms with classic sitcom actors), but they've been well received for the most part, so no one's really complaining too much.
The success of the BBC's Sherlock, a show about Sherlock Holmesin the present day, has inspired CBS to make their own modern-day Sherlock show titled Elementary. The BBC is considering taking CBS to court and has claimed that CBS had originally offered to remake Sherlock for American audiences.
Possibly to avoid legal action, CBS turned their Watson into "Dr. Joan Watson" played by the Asian-AmericanLucy Liu.
When it was announced that Showtime was considering a TV adaptation of Chew, some thought it was inspired by hit Showtime series Dexter. Both Dexter and Tony Chu work in law enforcement and have disgusting side-activities that help them fight crime. But that's about as far as the similarities go.
Dexter may have also paved the way for United States Of Tara and Nurse Jackie. Both are dark dramedy shows concerning a person struggling with a mental problem, split personality disorder in the former and drug addiction in the latter.
This happens a great deal with Singaporean television, especially the childrens' programming. My Classmate Dad is a Body SwapSitcom that basically is Freaky Friday with a lower standard of spoken English. Cosmo and George is about an alien who befriends a human who shows him the ropes of living on earth, which is a startlinglyoriginal concept. The Chinese-language drama serials are almost as bad in this respect. CID is CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Time Machine is uh..., Baby Blues is uh..., Beach. Ball. Babes. is Dead or Alive (specifically volleyball tournament game, that is), and a really new one, Mrs P.I., is pretty much Scarecrow And Mrs. King. The best part is that even if the shows are tenuously original, the English translations of their names, as you can gather, ruin everything.
Not only was ABC's Wide World of Sports one of American television's longest of long runners, it inspired a raft of imitators both domestic (CBS's Sports Spectacular, NBC's Sportsworld, even ESPN itself) and internatonal as well as several spinoffs (The American Sportsman, The Superstars, the Pro Bowlers Tour).
