Comedy Central releases yearly slate of shows you probably won't ever actually get to see
Because there are only so many Tosh.0 episodes and Scary Movie sequels, Comedy Central continues to work up new, original programming to fill up those hungry hours. Today it's once more offered its annual slate of shows in development, 90 percent of which, if past years are any indication, will go on to exist solely in sentence form in archived articles like this one. And as usual, a lot of them look pretty promising, many of them featuring comedians who definitely deserve to be working up their own projects, which almost definitely means you’ll never see them. But you can read about those projects here and then use your powers of imagination to envision what they might look like—which is even better, because you can also put yourself in them, and then give yourself really huge biceps. Here are some of the things awaiting your mental cameos before the Comedy Central executives in your head cancel them:
– Sketch comedy shows—including the previously announced The Nick Show Kroll and Key & Peele, both of which have already destroyed our headline's premise by already having actual, confirmed 2012 release dates; Eugene!, a faux-television network from Eugene Mirman; and My Mans, a show that threads a running narrative (about a guy who’s always getting into trouble and the friend who’s always bailing him out) through various standalone sketches, and is fittingly overseen by creative consultant Bob Odenkirk.
– Animated sketch-comedy shows, such as an adaptation of the webcomic Cyanide And Happiness, and TripTank, a collection of animated shorts from Robot Chicken producers that features comics like Jon Glaser, Laura Kightlinger, Joe Mande, and greedy bastard Bob Odenkirk, and plot lines that range from “a group of aliens studying the world’s most average guy” to “a magical alcoholic wheelchair helping sick children,” which was the original pitch for Ironside.
– Shows that are like, “Facebook and Twitter, am I right?”—including @RobDelaney, in which the comic and master of the dick-tweet will host a variety show in which he presents video and interviews guests remotely for what constitutes “a living, scrolling Twitter feed,” in that everyone’s constantly bragging and talking about what they’re watching on television, like anyone gives a shit. Along those very same lines, suggesting that only of them will ever come close to getting made and then discarded, comedian Michael Kosta’s Overloaded takes a look at trending topics on Twitter, Facebook, and across blogs in reports from both the studio and in the field, and thus “deconstructs the madness of social media and gets us back to what we all really need and want: real personal connections” with people to whom we can brag and then tell what we’re watching on television.
– Parodies of more traditional news formats, like Jeffrey Ross’ The Burn, in which the roastmaster and a group of fellow comedians gather to make fun of topical news stories, Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn-style, then (again) go into the field to “burn public figures and events,” metaphorically speaking. Presumably. Slightly more ambitious: Wyatt Cenac gets his own Daily Show spinoff in an as-yet-untitled parody of 1980s public affairs programs, and then there’s Time Trumpet, which examines pop culture and current events from 30 years in the future, and is executive-produced by In The Loop’s Armando Ianucci, suggesting the future will be extremely sardonic and wordy. And along with these several “in the field” shows, there’s also an even more direct attempt to rework the Jon Benjamin Has A Van concept, Nathan For You, with comedian Nathan Fielder (who co-starred in that series) attempting to help struggling businesses armed only with his finance degree and plenty of terrible advice.
– More stabs at the traditional sitcom format, including series in early development with comedians Amy Schumer and Anthony Jeselnik, who should probably just enjoy this part; the previously reported Review with Andy Daly; a show executive produced by “AutoTune The News” creators the Gregory Brothers and Tom Scharpling, about a musical group trying to break out via viral videos; Braunger, which is unfortunately not a crime drama about a take-no-guff ex-rodeo champ, but rather a single-camera comedy starring comic Matt Braunger as a guy who does closed-captioning for TV by day, then parties at night with his “gnome-like roommate” played by Kyle Kinane; Robots, in which household electronics plot a daily revolution against their slacker owner despite being too stupid and ill-equipped to do so.
– And finally, Brickleberry, a cartoon about “dysfunctional forest rangers” that features a voiceover performance from Daniel Tosh, ergo it has an assured spot on the 2012 schedule. As we mentioned before, most of the rest of these unfortunate, non-Tosh programs have now likely gotten as much exposure as they will ever have, so we hope you’ve enjoyed them.