You’re almost 50 years away from creating a television show that people still remind you of every day. In case you’re looking for any new ideas for projects that might help you get a little pythonless recognition, I’ll give you a kick start:
- Book Club: Each episode mirrors to some conflict in the real book their group is reading, with each member getting a turn as the main character. They discuss the main theme but are seemingly unaware of how it relates to their own lives.
- Building Neighbours: The only shot is the front view of an apartment building, where all units have unique patios. The neighbours are always hanging outside talking to each other, even though they can’t necessarily see everyone else. In the pilot, there’s a fire in one of the units where no one is home and the neighbours band together to save the day.
- As an alternative or addendum to this, all the neighbours could camp out in a wide hallway, like a mini-neighbourhood. In this one, there’s a main character who comes and goes, having chats with the fun hallway people.
- Insomniac: Everything switches seamlessly between dreams and reality. Who can even tell the difference anymore.
- Darwin Awards: Each episode follows a different winner, leading up to their death. Based on actual winners. Chars are sympathetic, although they’re undoubtedly pretty stupid.
- Sons of Menarche: A girl had sex right before first period, got pregnant and had triplet boys. This takes place when all the kids are fifteen years old and just entering high school.
- A construction site passerby gets injured, found to be caused by neglect from the company running the show. She sues them and wins the company in the settlement. She navigates her new job as CEO with flair and poise and a few shenanigans.
- Father Katz: Like Dr. Katz, but it takes place in the confessional, with the priest taking to his weirdo parishioners.
- Synadogue: A well-respected rabbi dog tries in vain and hilarity to manage his otherwise human synagogue’s business and followers.
- Evolving: One member from about five main species of human evolution all live together in one apartment and try to figure it all out, you know?
- Designing Houses: A parody of all those real estate flip shows.
- Leon: A spin-off of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Leon is the star of a show-within-the-show. He’s always screwing up lines and other characters try to bring the scene back. It’s basically a live sitcom, with no edits, and nobody knows what’s supposed to actually be in there.
- Middle School: Set in junior high, all the actors are adults portraying kids, and there’s never any mention of the age discrepancy.
- All Kinds: The surreal episodes continuously zoom in and out between different levels of the world. One level is people, but it also goes between planets, bacteria, anthropomorphic countries at war, atoms having a laugh, food in a fridge going bad, and whatnot. At each level, the characters face human-like problems that make sense based on their own realities. For some reason each episode title theme is a different song from the same Motown album.
Anyway, that’s all you get for now. There’s also Brunch, but I have a feeling that, like many people, the title alone with turn you off from it.
October 27 – John Cleese gets a new generation of shows