Acclaimed short-story author George Saunders recently ventured into novel writing with Lincoln In The Bardo, which was a smashing success. Now Saunders is heading to TV with an appropriately mind-bending premise. His inaugural project is a “zombie drama and family revenge comedy” called Sea Oak, which centers on Aunt Bernie, a woman whose uneventful life is cut short during a home invasion. Her spirit won’t rest, though, and she comes back from the dead to mess with the people who made her life less than pleasant, including her nephew and nieces, who are described as a “quasi-stripper” and “feckless,” respectively. Sea Oak is the “low-end subsidized hellhole of a housing complex” that will serve as the setting for all this righting of personal wrongs.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, this no-longer-meek, no-longer-living woman will be played by Glenn Close, the Oscar nominee who had much TV success in Damages, picking up multiple Emmy wins for her role as a ruthless lawyer opposite Rose Byrne. Saunders is writing the pilot, which was ordered by Amazon back in March. There’s no word on when Sea Oak will begin production.