Skip to main content

Ryan Murphy Sells Another Project... This Time to NBC

Ryan Murphy has sold yet another project to a network this week, landing himself a pilot script deal at NBC for a single-camera half-hour comedy based on Brian Frazer's memoir "Hyper-chondriac: One Man's Quest to Hurry Up and Calm Down," following a bidding war for the project between ABC and NBC.

Frazer's memoir is about his own odyssey to eliminate the stress that was causing his various medical ailments.

Jason Dean Hall (Grand Theft Auto) will adapt the book for television, with the plot revolving around a pharmaceutical salesman who sells his supplies at hospitals and believes he is suffering from various illnesses... the symptoms of which end up being real, rather than imagined, but are caused by other factors.

Murphy is attached to direct and executive produce the pilot for Hyper-condriac, which is expected to shoot next year.

The news comes swiftly on the heels of Murphy's sale of his drama pilot script Glee, which FOX picked up in July and has hopes to put on the air sometime in March.

Glee is about a high school Spanish teacher who becomes the adviser to the school's glee club, made up of a motley crew of eccentrics whom he hopes to mold into a formidable musical force.

I read the script for Glee about two weeks ago and have to say that I was less than impressed. I get that FOX wants to put this on the air at the same time that American Idol is on, hoping that the halo effect will continue over to this dull drama.

Murphy mined teenagedom to far better effect in his shortlived WB series Popular and here the characters are so stock that they seem made of cardboard. I also just don't see where this series is going and the plot seems better suited for a film than an ongoing series, especially given that some of the obstacles facing the glee club are already erased by the end of the pilot script. How very disappointing.

Stay tuned.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: NCIS (CBS); Celebrity Family Feud (NBC); Beauty & the Geek (CW); Wipeout (ABC); Kitchen Nightmares (FOX)

9 pm: Big Brother 10 (CBS); America's Got Talent (NBC; 9-11 pm); Reaper (CW); I Survived a Japanese Game Show (ABC; 9-11 pm); House (FOX)

10 pm: Without a Trace (CBS)

What I'll Be Watching

8-10 pm: Britcoms on BBC America.

I don't know about you but by Tuesday night, I'm usually in need of some comedy in my life. Why not stick around on Tuesday nights for BBC America's new comedy lineup, consisting of classic episodes of Coupling, new comedy Not Going Out, and Absolutely Fabulous?

8 pm: Kitchen Nightmares.

'Cause I miss the softer side of Gordon Ramsay.

10 pm: Flipping Out on Bravo.

On the second season finale of Flipping Out ("Back in the Market"), Jeff refuses to be a "doormat" anymore and comes down hard on his crew whilst finding himself looking for a new place to live, with a deal on Commonwealth looking likely to close.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hmmm...based on your description, I have to say that "Hyper-chondriac" sounds much more interesting than "Glee," which seems more like a movie-of-the-week.

Popular posts from this blog

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj