After years of mining laughs from rooms choked with families, workmates, and unconventional roommates of the opposite sex, Fox is now going the opposite direction, making good on its recent avowal to kill pilot season with a straight-to-series order for Last Man On Earth. The single-camera comedy was created by and stars Will Forte, who will play, indeed, the only living human left on Earth, blissfully unbothered by the sorts of petty conflicts, farcical misunderstandings, and intrusions on his personal life that plague the rest of our sitcom characters. It’s a high concept right up the alley of Forte and his executive producers, The Lego Movie’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who all previously worked together on the bizarro Clone High.
Still, despite the intriguing premise of watching Forte enjoying a respite from tedious witty banter while foraging for food and masturbating—and despite Fox’s insistence that Last Man On Earth is a single-lead show—early word on the series said it would actually be about two people who have to overcome their differences in order to preserve the human race. So either this is all misdirection to conceal what happens in the pilot, or Forte does meet another person, they immediately begin to fill his life with situation comedy, and he caves in their head with a rock.