In what would be a crazy idea by most standards, but a great idea by NBC standards, the network is developing a musical primetime soap about a funeral home. Deadline reports that About A Boy and Smash writer Julia Brownell is creating the show, with backing from producers Jason Katims (Boy, Parenthood), and Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (Smash, The Wiz). The hour-long show is “inspired by” a real-life funeral parlor in a rough area of Los Angeles, whose funeral services “feature music blaring from the hearse and pallbearers dressed in top hats and tails dancing the casket down the church aisle.”
The series will follow a mother-daughter team who run the funeral home, and NBC is so far describing it as a “workplace soap with musical elements.” As everyone knows, high-concept primetime TV musicals are a can’t fail proposition, so look for Go Out On A High Note, or whatever they end up calling it, to delight audiences for years to come.