Following last week’s pilot order for Roadies, a comedic project from Cameron Crowe and J.J. Abrams, Showtime obviously still has a taste for laughter. The network is teaming with comedian/viral star Rachel Bloom for the half-hour musical comedy pilot Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which will be directed and executive produced by The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s Marc Webb. Don’t expect Paul Giamatti in a Rhino suit here, though.
I am all for television comedy being taken over by actual comedians, rather than network execs and non-creative producers, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend sounds like just the right kind of offbeat story to stand out in the crowd. Bloom, who sold her pitch to Showtime in October of last year, will play Rebecca, a “young woman who abandons a choice job at a law firm and her life in New York in an attempt to find love in the unlikely locale of West Covina, California,” according to THR. There will also be musical elements incorporated, which brings to mind HBO’s Flight of the Conchords, though skewed more towards Bloom’s writing style. All in all, this sounds great, especially since it’ll be for Showtime, where just about anything can be said and shown.
For a good example of the kind of material Bloom is known for, here’s her breakout hit, the audibly NSFW “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury.”
Webb, who will probably be pulling from his 500 Days of Summer bag of tricks over his greenscreen-heavy action skills, will be working from a script co-written by Bloom and The Devil Wears Prada screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, who is also on board to executive produce. McKenna also wrote the upcoming feature reimaginings for Annie and Cinderella, so it’ll be interesting to witness the balance between her more mainstream storytelling and Bloom’s specific brand of comedy.
Oh, you want more? Here is Bloom's particularly spot-on “Historically Accurate Disney Princess Song,” which she created for Cracked.com.
Strange that Showtime would order two music-themed shows in the same week; Roadies, which also has My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman as a showrunner, will follow the unsung heroes of the music touring world. It doesn’t sound like there will be a lot of overlapping for subject matter, though. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is set to go into production this summer, so expect some quick casting news to come out in the next few weeks, and we'll hopefully see it hit Showtime later this year.
