The Best TV Shows About Blended Families
List of the best television shows that feature blended families. The theme of many of the top television shows through the generations is that family is not just the group you’re born into. Today, many TV shows feature characters who consider their friends and coworkers to be their family,while others show a tight bond with their makeshift families. No matter what the genre or content of the show, most shows heavily feature the idea of family. However it’s much rarer for a show to feature a blended family, which is essentially two or more familial groups that come together to form one big family. The infrequent television trope began with The Brady Bunch, a family of six step brothers and sisters who viewed the world in their own, naïve way.
Throughout the years on television the idea of the blended family has popped up in new and interesting ways. Often these shows feature step parents getting to know their new children, such as Step by Step, while others feature adopted children, like Diff’rent Strokes and Webster. Families like the one in Full House began with friendships who became actual family,while others like Modern Family include step-families and adopted families.
What shows best showcase blended families? The shows on this list are known to have people who may not have started off life as family, but became close through blended circumstances. When you're done, be sure to check out our list of the best movies about adoption.
- Modern Family (ABC, 2009) is an American comedy television sitcom created by Francisco Bobadilla. Three different but related families face trials and tribulations in their own unique way from the ...more
- Stepbrothers keep busy during their summer vacation.
- Full House (ABC, 1987) is an American sitcom created by Jeff Franklin. The show chronicles a widowed father, who enlists his best friend and his brother-in-law to help raise his three daughters.
- A woman with three daughters marries a widower with three sons.
- Drake & Josh (Nickelodeon, 2004) is an American sitcom created by Dan Schneider. Despite having opposite personalities, stepbrothers Drake Parker (Drake Bell) and Josh Nichols (Josh Peck) get into ...more
- This Is Us (NBC, 2016) is an American television series created by Dan Fogelman. Follows a unique ensemble, as their paths cross and their life stories intertwine, from sharing the same birthday, to ...more
- Twins, separated at birth, scheme to bring their single adoptive parents together.
- A widow and a divorced man impulsively marry and merge their families.
- The Fosters (Freeform, 2013) is an American drama television series created by Bradley Bredeweig and Peter Paige. Teenager Callie Jacob (Maia Mitchell) is placed in a foster home with a lesbian ...more
- Two black kids from Harlem, Arnold Jackson and older brother Willis, are welcomed into the family of wealthy New York businessman Philip Drummond when their mother, his housekeeper, passes away. The ...more
- Shameless (Showtime, 2011) is an American comedy-drama television series developed by John Wells, based on the 2004 British series. Led by drunk patriarch Frank (William H. Macy), the poor and ...more
- I think Alf was adopted.ALF is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from September 22, 1986 to March 24, 1990. It was the first television series to be presented in Dolby Surround sound system. The title character is Gordon ...more
- Widower Steve Douglas raises a trio of boys.
- Punky Brewster (Peacock, 2021) is an American television sitcom and a follow-up series to the 1980s sitcom of the same name. The series will revisit Punky as a single mother of three trying to get ...more
- The social interactions of a group of misfits, including a divorcee and an Internet billionaire.
- Life with Derek is a Canadian television sitcom that aired on Family and VRAK.TV in Canada and on Disney Channel in the United States. The series premiered on Family on September 18, 2005, and ran ...more
- A sitcom from a pet's point-of-view.
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch is an American low-budget animated sitcom television series produced by Filmation that aired on CBS from 1971 to 1974. A spinoff of The Archie Comedy Hour, the show featured ...more
- This six-part docu-series weaves together rarely told stories of the moon landing, Manson murders, the Chappaquiddick scandal and Woodstock with that of Nixon's first year in office, John Lennon's ...more
- Webster is an American situation comedy that aired on ABC from September 16, 1983 until May 8, 1987, and in first-run syndication from September 21, 1987 until March 10, 1989. The series was created ...more
- Punky Brewster is a child who has been abandoned by her parents. Taken in by crusty Chicago photographer Henry Warnimont, Punky and her dog, Brandon, teach Henry how to lighten up. Cherie and Allen ...more
- The lives of privileged but dysfunctional friends on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
- A party girl marries a man who has three children.
- Glee (Fox, 2009) is an American musical comedy-drama television series created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan. A group of ambitious misfits try to escape the harsh realities of high ...more
- The Umbrella Academy (Netflix, 2019) is an American television series developed by Steve Blackman, based on the comic book series by Gerard Way. A disbanded group of superheroes reunite after their ...more