It’s apparently a big day for non-traditional sitcom families, with ABC announcing that it’s developing two new series from Rick Wiener and Kenny Schwartz. The pair, who’ve served in the past as executive producers on both American Dad and Modern Family, have sold the network on a series about a gay couple whose members raise their families together despite being divorced, and one about a cancer patient who’s forced to take back all the awful things she’s said after she goes into remission.
The first series is inspired by Schwartz’s real life, despite the fact that its “The Brady Bunch, but everybody is divorced and gay” premise sounds like the worst nightmare of pearl-clutching moral defenders. The other, meanwhile, sounds like a natural extension of the “ethically challenged cancer patient” archetype that’s dominated the public consciousness for so long—albeit with a more comedic, remorseful spin. Neither of the new shows have names yet, although we kind of like Fixing Bad or Breaking Sad for the one about the lady in remission.
The new shows will be the second and third collaborations between ABC and Wiener and Schwartz; the two previously worked on the first season of the network’s recently renewed medieval musical comedy Galavant.