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EXCLUSIVE: Mira Sorvino is returning to her comedy roots (she won an Oscar for Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite) with a starring role opposite Jim Gaffigan in his CBS comedy pilot. Written by Gaffigan and Peter Tolan (the two co-wrote the story, and Tolan wrote the script), the project centers on Jim (Gaffigan) a guy who lives with his wife Jeannie (Sorvino) and five kids in a 2-bedroom New York apartment. Sorvino’s Jeannie is a super-wife and super-mom. The mother of five kids, she has a sixth child in the house: her husband Jim. Sony Pictures TV and Fedora are producing, with Gaffigan, Tolan, Michael Wimer and Alex Murray executive producing. The pilot reunites Sorvino with CBS where she toplined drama pilot Trooper last season. (She also reprised her role in the TNT version of the pilot.) In addition to Mighty Aphrodite, Sorvino’s comedic roles include the cult Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion and last year’s well reviewed Union Square. She is with ICM Partners, Untitled Entertainment and Michael Adler & Jonathan Shikora.
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The blandest, most generic concept I have ever heard. With all due respect.
This is such an old hackneyed premise. How the hell did the pilot get the green light? Snore.
“How the hell did the pilot get the green light?”
because the execs are risk averse, old hackneyed premise, yes, it just might work.
They’re betting on the cast. Execs firmly believe a great cast can make the most hackneyed crap fresh.
Oh, please. There hasn’t been anything original in TV comedy in at least four decades. Some of the premises go all the way back to vaudeville. Some even to Shakespeare!
Love that she is doing comedy again! This sounds like a really fun script and CBS seems perfect. Excited to see this one.
I guess after that trooper show failed to get picked up by either network or cable, Mira has been reduced to this. Sad. Sounds like the same old generic sitcom crap that pollutes each season (smart ass bordeline hottie wife plus idiot oafish man child husband – is there a role for some veteran actor as a parent a la Jerry Stiller in The King of Queens?). Ugh. Mira deserves better than being second fiddle.
The King of Queens is exactly what I was thinking.
Gaffigan is great — Sorvino is annoying and unfunny. Fail.
Bland? Generic? Snore? From the guys behind Larry Sanders, Rescue Me and Pale Force? Do any of you commenters actually ever read a script? In fact, this one is (predictably) hilarious, and Sorvino’s perfect for it.
Conversely, just because people have done good work in the past, does that mean that everything they touch must be gold?
Having read this pilot, I can honestly say that it is AWFUL, and I like all the parties involved. I don’t know if Jim Gaffigan has what it takes to last on TV. He does not have the lovable doughiness of a Kevin James; his schtick is harder to describe and better suited to his standup (which I also find to be overrated).
Even his stand-up is mediocre. I don’t see this lasting too long.
I don’t normally read deadline, but are the comments always so bitter and derisive? The couple of times I’ve been here, the commenters sound like huge a-holes, blasting projects for not having a better premise. If you guys are so in-the-know, you’d realize that high concept stuff is harder to get greenlit and is harder to get people to watch. And comedy is based on more than just the concept. Why not wait and see the finishef product for yourselves before bashing something based on a brief blurb?
Agreed. I’m not in the business, but I’ve grown to being more open to generic sounding concepts simply because something too specialized can run out of ideas quickly and because shows often grow. Also, think of how classic shows might be pitched. “Cheers” would essentially be described as “an uppity woman gets dumped by her academic fiancee and has to remake her life in a bar run by a recovering alcoholic and a mouthy waitress and populated by working class quasi-drunks,” but it ended up being so much more than that, no?
It may seem bland, however that’s gaffigans family, you know the star in the show. Millions listen to him and go to his show, bland or not he obviously is doing something that works or else he wouldn’t sell out any shows as he constantly does
It’s a show about nothing again.
big fan of Gaffigan, he is super funny. glad to see a comedian that I follow get a show. looking forward to it.
that worked out pretty well last time.
Jim Gaffigan is by far the funniest comedian around! Excited for this one!
Jim is very funny because of his comedy act not because he has a wife and kids. And he rarely uses them in his act. I think a show where Jim is single and works at a fast-food place would make a better fit for his audience.
haha that actually sounds promising
Awesome and family oriented-This is gonna be a winner for sure!
No Arthur. Jim’s comedy act is funny because He is himself in it, not some character. He needs to play some version of himself, which is who he is in his act. He gets his comdey from his real life and spruces it up with imagination as well.
If he plays a character outside of himself it just doesn’t work as well. IMHO
Yay! Big fan of the Gaff-man!!! His real life wife is funny as well. Good to see Mira back on tv. I like sitcoms over reality tv shows any day (…although this is based “loosely” on Jim’s life, right?).
Let me know when this airs. I’ll need to stock up on hot pockets and bacon…
Ignore the haters, Jim. You can laugh all the way to the bank, even if this isn’t successful. The “wanna be” critics here can go back to other shows they hate…
LOL @ “bland & hackneyed.” Meanwhile all those hip, cutting-edge, no laugh track comedies with the exception of “Modern Family” are ending (“30 Rock”) or close to it (“The Office,” “Up All Night”), or struggling to get anybody to watch (“Community”). There’s a reason CBS is #1.
CBS learned their lesson forty years ago when they canceled all of their shows for being too “rural”. Took them a few years to recover. Luckily, they had M*A*S*H and Mary Tyler Moore. So now they basically appeal to the vast population BETWEEN L.A. and NYC, while some networks (*cough* NBComcast, ABC) are basically only trying to appeal to L.A. and NYC types.
I’m so excited for this
Showing your Age !!! Shakespeare? Want some Mandy’s Bob?
Actually ‘B’ – high concept means it’s in an idea that’s very easy to be understood and therefore pitched. So it’s the exact opposite – high concept ideas are easier to be green lit and understood by the majority the viewing audience.