ABC has added to its development slate of shows with seemingly generic, yet wildly open to interpretation titles by ordering Nuclear Family, from King Of The Hill writers Peter Huyck and Alex Gregory. Neither about a traditional nuclear family, of the sort in which many sitcom high jinks could take place, nor about a family exposed to dangerous radiation that leaves them all slowly dying of brain cancer under quarantine, nor about a family of sarcastic yet loving atoms, Nuclear Family is instead about something unlikely.
It’s essentially a sitcom spin on the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie story, concerning “self-professed altruists Rick and Barbara Foley,” whose adoption of eight kids from various countries has created a world’s fair of international dysfunction that’s only exacerbated by their own self-involvement—and leaves their one biological kid starved for attention. So then he gets his hands on the nuclear codes and threatens to destroy us all from his fortress beneath a volcano, in the version of Nuclear Family ABC isn’t making, probably because of Last Resort. Thanks, Last Resort!