The wheel of reboots goes ’round and ’round, but as the showrunners of Hulu’s new sitcom How I Met Your Father will stress, this baby’s not a reboot—it’s a sequel. The series utilizes many of the same stratagems as its predecessor, How I Met Your Mother, including a single-cam approach, a 30-something ensemble cast, and trope-y references to the dating game in a big city, but with a woman in the hopeless romantic’s chair, i.e. Sophie (a game but underutilized Hilary Duff). You won’t meet Ted Mosby or Barney Stinson in any of the dive bars or acronym-ed clubs Sophie and her cohort frequent, but their influence unavoidably hovers over the series, even as it attempts to differentiate itself.
Showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, of Love, Simon and This Is Us acclaim, felt How I Met Your Father could capture audiences through two funnels: nostalgia or, ideally, timelessness. If all went well, they could have it both ways: A successful show’s name and imagery would brand their project, but the project itself would elicit its own ardent fanbase.
“I think we felt like [the HIMYM writers] had told their chapter so beautifully and so perfectly,” Berger tells ELLE.com, “but it definitely felt to us like there was still another story to be told here. I think the notion of coming up with your friends in New York City and finding love and finding your person and not giving up hope, that is really a timeless thing that doesn’t go away for people. I think people are experiencing it in a whole new way right now in 2022.”
It’s too soon in HIMYF‘s run to tell if such an approach can yield enough new material to feel anything other than disorienting. Single-cam sitcoms are few and far between in 2022, and even Sophie’s winking references to Tinder dates (88 of them, to be exact) and FOMO feel mind-boggling in the midst of the COVID pandemic. But if you long for a simpler time, perhaps before HIMYM crash-bombed into its much-despised finale, it doesn’t hurt to give its successor a chance. Here’s how (and when) to tune in.
- Episode 1 streaming at 3 a.m. EST on January 18
- Episode 2 streaming at 3 a.m. EST on January 18
- Episode 3 streaming at 3 a.m. EST on January 25
- Episode 4 streaming at 3 a.m. EST on February 1
- Episode 5 streaming at 3 a.m. EST on February 8
- Episode 6 streaming at 3 a.m. EST on February 15
- Episode 7 streaming at 3 a.m. EST on February 22
- Episode 8 streaming at 3 a.m. EST on March 1
- Episode 9 streaming at 3 a.m. EST on March 8
- Episode 10 streaming at 3 a.m. EST on March 15
To watch, you’ll need a Hulu subscription plan, which you can try for free for seven days. If you decide to opt in, you can pay for an ads-added version for $6.99 per month or remove the ads for $12.99 per month. If you’re interested in adding in live TV, the bundle costs $69.99 per month with ads or $75.99 per month without.
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