How I Met Your Father Review: The Latest Upcoming Show on Disney+

The early-2000s gave us a slew of sitcoms that have continued to become pop culture staples to this day. Friends was winding down after years of dominating television sets across the world. Many TV shows that came after Friends were very much inspired by the concept of creating a found family with, well your friends. Shows from that era that followed this trend were The Big Bang Theory, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and of course, How I Met Your Mother.

Eight years after the iconic series ended, How I Met Your Father, the spin-off series with a completely new cast of characters has ended its first season with a cliffhanger of an episode. The show takes the familiar concepts of its predecessor and attempts to rehash them for a modern Millennial and Gen Z audience.

The show follows Sophie (Hillary Duff), a bright-eyed photographer in New York who refuses to give up on finding her soulmate. She is joined in an ensemble cast by her roommate and best friend, Valentina (Francia Raisa), Jesse (Chris Lowell), an aspiring musician and teacher (who also moonlights as an Uber driver) along with many other characters.

Sophie can be best summed up by a mantra that she tries to impart to Jesse in the third episode to uplift him regarding his love life, “Today is the first chapter of my next great love story”.

Despite having gone out with 88 guys in the past year and having a mother who can be at best described as a “hot mess”, Sophie still believes that there is a soulmate out there for everyone.

Like its predecessor, How I Met Your Father is narrated by an older Sophie, played by Kim Catrall, to her son in 2050. But unlike How I Met Your Mother, Sophie meets the titular parent in the first episode but doesn’t know it yet.

The show makes multiple references to its parent show, such as Jesse and Sid being the latest occupants in the iconic apartment Ted and Marshall shared in How I Met Your Mother. There are also some surprising appearances from cast members from the previous show. Despite these connections, the show makes efforts to differentiate itself from How I Met Your Mother, such as the main cast being compromised of completely new people and dating being more app-based. The references pop out to any fans of the spin-off's predecessor show, but more often than not they make you want to switch shows rather than being endearing callbacks.

The show at times panders to its Millennial and Gen Z audience, shoehorning in so many trendy bits of pop culture that you start to feel like the eye-rolling Millennial bartender who works for Sid.

There is a whole episode dedicated to influencers and Sophie’s attempts at connecting with stuck-up tweens who are constantly glued to their phones.

Overall, a How I Met Your Mother fan would enjoy the connections between the show and its predecessor but the show at best induces a sense of nostalgia and at worst leaves you rolling your eyes and shaking your head at the attempts to pander to a younger generation. Despite these shortcomings, How I Met Your Father does offer a nice sense of escapism in a time of increasing pessimism in the world. 

It's entertaining, but it sorely misses the mark and works better as an advertisement for its predecessor because of how badly viewers will want to go back to the original show.

How I Met Your Father will be released in the UK on Disney Plus on Wednesday, 11th May 2022.