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NBC continues to travel back in time to the pilot seasons of yesteryear with two orders to multi-cam sitcoms from seasoned broadcast comedy writer-producers who both worked on NBC’s Will & Grace: The New Adventures of Old Christine creator Kari Lizer and black-ish executive producer Gail Lerner.
The Kari Lizer project is headlined by Katey Sagal, star of classic network sitcom Married… with Children, and Glee‘s Jane Lynch; Gail Lerner’s Newlyweds is executive produced by Jamie Lee Curtis, sitcom veterans Eric and Kim Tannenbaum (Two and a Half Men) and Scott Schwartz, who as an agent, packaged some of the top sitcoms of 2000s, including Will & Grace, The New Adventures of Old Christine and Reba.
The two pilots are believed to be eyed as potential companions to Reba McEntire’s current multi-camera sitcom on NBC, Happy’s Place.
Newlyweds and the untitled Lizer, Lynch and Sagal project cap what has been a comeback pilot season by NBC with eight orders — five dramas and three comedies — all within the traditional broadcast pilot window for upfronts consideration.
The previously ordered six pilots all come from NBC sibling Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, which is also behind Newlyweds, with Lionsgate Television, where The Tannenbaum Co. had been under a deal, executive producing.
Somewhat surprisingly, the Lizer, Lynch and Sagal project comes from Paramount Skydance’s streaming-focused Paramount Television Studios. Also unexpectedly, the sitcom is executive produced by former Grey’s Anatomy showrunner Krista Vernoff, known primarily for her drama work, in her return to broadcast television. It reunites her with Sagal, star of Vernoff’s ABC drama series Rebel.
Written by Lerner, Newlyweds has a cast-contingent order, I hear. It is a later-in-life love story about a free-spirited woman and a buttoned-up professor who marry impetuously after a whirlwind courtship.
The project was once set up at Netflix with Curtis attached to star as the female lead. She is executive producing the NBC pilot alongside Lerner, Eric Tannenbaum, Kim Tannenbaum, Scott Schwartz and Lionsgate Television. There is a possibility for Curtis to take on a supporting/guest role, sources said.
Loosely inspired by real life best friends and therapists Pepper Schwartz and Janet Lever, the Lizer, Lynch and Sagal sitcom centers on Ginger (Sagal) and Jill (Lynch) who have always been a team as opposites that work best together. As they sort their past and look toward their future, they’ll discover that in spite of it all, they wouldn’t change a thing.
Lizer, Lynch and Sagal executive produce with Vernoff, Andrew Stearn and Alexandre Schmitt of Trip the Light Productions. Schwartz and Lever serve as consulting producers.
The project originated at Skydance Television, migrating to the newly formed Paramount TV Studios after Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount Global. As Deadline has reported, while PTVS’ priority is developing for streaming, it has the ability to occasionally produce for broadcast the way CBS Studios, which supplies broadcast network CBS, also can sell to streamers.
Still, PTVS getting a pilot at NBC is unusual; the studio’s two current broadcast series, drama Marshals and reality series The Road — both coming from the former MTV Entertainment Studios — are both for sibling CBS.
NBC had been expected to pick up a sizable number of pilots by today’s standards this pilot season — about four dramas and four comedies. The network so far has picked up five drama pilots — The Rockford Files reboot, Protection, the untitled Georgaris/Fox project, Puzzled and What the Dead Know — and three comedies — the multi-cam Newlyweds and Lizer, Sagal & Lynch project, and the single-camera untitled Goor/Del Tredici project — all within the past three weeks.
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