Mr. & Mrs. Smith TV Series Already Came Out In… 1996

Summary:

• Mr. & Mrs. Smith TV series, inspired by the 2005 movie of the same name, was recently released to critical and fan acclaim
• Curiously, a show with the exact same title and similar premise was released nearly three decades ago, but was quickly canceled
• The project bears similarities to both the 2005 film and the 2024 series, but all connections have been officially denied

The newly released Mr. & Mrs. Smith TV series on Amazon Prime Video came as a big surprise to most fans, as not everyone thought it could live up to the cult classic 2005 movie of the same name.

Yet the show proved to be even better in many ways, combining humor and heartfelt moments with great acting from Donald Glover and Maya Erskine to deliver a great story that kept viewers glued to their screens.

However, not everyone is aware that almost three decades ago, another TV show with the exact same title and a suspiciously similar story was released, but apparently it was just an extremely bizarre coincidence.

A Show Of The Same Name Was Released In 1996

Starring Scott Bakula and Maria Bello as the titular agents, Mr. & Mrs. Smith premiered on CBS in September 1996, but didn't even last one season, being canceled after episode 9.

Oddly enough, the story is similar to both the 2005 feature film and the 2024 TV series, with Mrs. Smith starting out as a rival agent, only to eventually team up with Mr. Smith, leading to them pretending to be a married couple.

For comparison, the movie showed the duo as married professional assassins working for rival companies, though they were initially completely unaware of this fact, each believing they were married to a civilian.

In turn, the 2024 series presented John and Jane as agents working together for the same organization under the elaborate guise of being married, but over the course of the story their relationship grew into something more than just a cover story.

Officially, The Connection Has Been Denied

But the strangest thing is that while the 2024 and 2005 projects are connected, with the show being inspired by the movie, they officially have nothing to do with the 1996 show.

The co-creator of the '90s TV series, Kerry Lenhart, said in an interview with Slash Film that while some similarities between his work and the 2005 movie are obvious, "even unofficially, there's just too many differences" between the projects.

Either way, fans point out that the fact that both the new show and the movie resemble the 1996 series in various ways is indeed too strange to be a mere coincidence, even if all connections have been officially denied.

Perhaps it can all be attributed to cryptomnesia, a phenomenon in which a person mistakes a forgotten memory for an original idea, but most likely we will never know the actual truth.

Sources: Slash Film, Reddit