TBS has been working extremely hard to rebrand this TV season. To help with the process, today the network agreed to put together a pilot for Quality Time, a brand new project from the Broken Lizard production company, otherwise known as the team behind Super Troopers and Beerfest.
Quality Time will follow four adults who have been friends since college. They’ve managed to maintain their juvenile behaviors and friendships throughout their time as adults, but are now being pushed into having children. TBS is calling the comedy an “untraditional” look at fatherhood, but what’s really exciting about Quality Time is not its plot. Instead, it’s the fact that Broken Lizards Paul Soter, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme and Erik Stolhansk, otherwise known as Foster, Farva, Mac and Rabbit, are all involved with the new pilot.
According to THR the four aforementioned actors and writers will have a huge hand in Quality Time, a pilot that will be based off of the men's real life experiences as friends who grew into adulthood with one another. Paul Soter will write, direct and executive produce the pilot, as well as star in that sucker. Heffernan, Lemme and Stolhansk will also write and executive produce, as well as star in Quality Time. Additionally, Michael Rosenberg, John Morayniss, Steven Amato and Michael Wallen are all signed on to executive produce the project.
The order for the comedy comes just as TBS has been slowly canceling its current comedy lineup. About a month ago, TBS announced that Sullivan & Sons had gotten canceled, and before that both Men at Work and The Pete Holmes Show also bit the dust. The move comes as both TBS and its sister channel TNT have undergone rebranding in recent months following signing on Kevin Reilly to move both brands forward. If you’ll remember, over at TNT, Reilly has also cleaned house, canceling both Perception and Franklin & Bash in recent weeks.
“Edgy” is the new keyword TBS and TNT are looking to roll with, and it’s pretty easy to see why the aforementioned shows were cancelled thanks to lacking in that department. Presumably, Quality Time wouldn’t be moving forward if it didn’t fit the network’s new programming priorities. Obviously, the show has only earned a pilot order at this point, but hopefully we will see it move forward to series some time in the coming months. At the very least, I'm interested to see how the comedians do when they are tasked with taking their R-rated, dick joke-oriented writing and making it suitable for a TV station like TBS. After all, the network may be looking for edgy, but TBS can only go so far.
