The comedy marketplace is coming off a tough year with few buys and even fewer greenlights as the number of networks and platforms focused on comedy fare shrunk further with Amazon Freevee’s shutdown after Comedy Central, TBS, TruTV and IFC had all gotten out of the live-action scripted comedy business over the last couple of years. The broadcast networks produce a fraction of the comedy output they had just a decade ago, and streamers prioritize noisy dramas over comedies in pursuit of subscriber acquisition and retention.
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Amid the pullback, HBO has spent the last year rebuilding its comedy slate after the departure of stalwarts like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Barry. In 2024, the network ordered two comedy pilots from writer-performers, Tim Robinson’s The Chair Company and an untitled Rachel Sennott half-hour, both of which were picked up to series that are currently being written. Additionally, HBO last May gave straight-to-series order to a Bill Lawrence college comedy starring Steve Carell, which is finishing casting. It was followed by another series order to Kansas City Star starring Kaley Cuoco, from the creators of Hacks, and most recently a pickup of a series created by and starring Sharon Horgan.
With Danny McBride’s The Righteous Gemstones back for its fourth and final season, which kicked off Sunday, to be followed by the Season 2 return of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal in April, HBO has a slate of comedy series that is larger than any broadcast network or streamer except for Netflix.
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HBO’s Head of Comedy, EVP Amy Gravitt, who succeeded in the role current HBO and Max Content CEO Casey Bloys almost eight years ago, spoke of the network’s comedy buildup amid genre’s downturn after The Righteous Gemstones Season 4 premiere last week.
“I personally need to stay in the comedy business,” she quipped, adding, “Casey is a comedy executive, so I am lucky in that regard, and in our long history of working together, he obviously trusts my taste. So I have full support inside the company to continue to keep the HBO comedy brand thriving.”
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That includes getting “a lot of new voices from the comedy side of the building that all stay with us, like Danny, and continuing to go on and create shows, but also move around, hop over to the drama side.”
Departing ‘Gemstones’
On stage at The Righteous Gemstones premiere, Gravitt noted that McBride has now done 10 seasons of television for HBO across Eastbound & Down, Vice Principals and Gemstones.
Asked who made the decision to end the televangelist family comedy after four seasons, McBride or HBO, Gravitt noted that creators “tend to know if they have more story to tell or not,” adding, “We are always in such constant dialog from the beginning of a pilot to the end of a series, that it isn’t necessarily a decision between one or the other, but something that we talk about together.”
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On stage earlier, Gemstones creator, writer, director, executive producer and star McBride explained how the decision came late in the process as he didn’t set out to conceive Season 4 as a final chapter.
“When we started writing the show, a lot of the themes and stuff that were coming to our brains were about closure and about moving on,” he said. “I wanted to keep an open mind as we shot, just in case it didn’t feel like that, or if we tanked it, we have a chance to redo it. But as we moved through the season, it became apparent to me that we were completing what we had set out to do.”
He thanked The Righteous Gemstones “fans on the inside” at HBO for making it possible “to complete the show we wanted to do.”
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While McBride is still executive producing lower-budgeted late-night HBO comedy It’s Florida, Man, and has a couple of things in development as a producer, Gravitt would love a fourth primetime series with him as a creator-performer.
“I know he’s hopefully taking a well deserved break; It’s a lot to star in, write and direct shows, and as you can see, they’re massive in scale, especially this season [of Gemstones],” she said. “So he should get a moment to take a breather but I never take an opportunity of having him in L.A. without talking about what might be next.”
Passing on the HBO comedy DNA
The Righteous Gemstones, the last of HBO’s previous crop of comedy shows, coming to an end marks a changing of the guard moment for the network. But the transition won’t be abrupt, and there will be continuity, Gravitt said.
“I don’t think we’ve ever entirely replaced an individual show, but you start to see the lineage amongst different types of shows,” she said. “For me, there’s something about the conversations I’m having with Tim Robinson on The Chair Company that feel like it’s following in the tradition of Danny, very much his own creator. I see that show scratching the itch the way Danny does.”
The Chair Company, co-written by Robinson and Zach Kanin, stars Robinson as a guy who suffers an embarrassing incident at work and finds himself investigating a far-reaching conspiracy.
“And similarly, we have this show with Rachel Sennott that is talking about a certain time in life in the way that we’ve had other shows that have addressed it from a specific comedic point of view,” Gravitt said.
The yet-untitled Rachel Sennott comedy, about a codependent friend group, has been drawing parallels to other HBO ensemble comedies about friends, most notably Lena Dunham’s Girls.
“It’s really about identifying that writer-performer who not only tonally feels like they fit inside HBO, but also process-wise,” Gravitt said. “Each of the shows that I’ve talked about have been very homegrown in the way that Danny’s shows have been with us. It’s about the voice, but it’s also just about how we work together and help crack the idea for shows.”
Carell and Horgan’s HBO series
Set on a college campus, the untitled Steve Carell comedy from Lawrence and Matt Tarses, which is slated to start production next month, centers on an author’s (Carell) complicated relationship with his daughter. His character gives some Crazy, Stupid, Love vibes, the 2011 movie Carell starred in.
“I think it will certainly offer that up,” Gravitt said. “I’ve always wanted to do a show set in a college environment, and adding Steve at the center of it as a way into that world as a character who is exploring college experience for the first time later in life really felt like the way for us to do it. And, of course, working with Bill has been a really fantastic partnership.”
While the Kaley Cuoco comedy Kansas City Star is on a slower track as its creators, the Hacks trio of Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky, “are busy, still creating more Hacks,” the recently greenlighted Sharon Horgan series, in which she will star as a 50-year-old divorcee searching for sex and love while looking after her parents and son, is moving full-steam ahead, Gravitt said.
“She’s already got the wheels turning,” Gravitt said of Horgan, recalling working with the London-born, Irish creator-performer as a young executive at HBO a decade ago on the comedy series Divorce.
“I’m thrilled to finally work with her again,” Gravitt said.
As for the fact that three of the five new HBO comedy series have female leads, Horgan, Sennott and Cuoco, with two of them also creating their shows, “they are just such funny people,” Gravitt said. “It’s fantastic that they are women but first and foremost, they are hilarious, writer-performers.”
Experimenting with form (and cost)
Irreverent, low-budget anthology comedy It’s Florida, Man, whose impressive performance earned it a second-season renewal, is produced under a cost-effective model HBO has been using, largely for the Friday late-night slot shepherded by EVP Nina Rosenstein. Previous series under that model include Julio Torres’ Los Espookys and Fantasmas.
“I think the lower the budget, the more you can play around with form and tone, and you can take wild swings,” Gravitt said.
Experimentation occasionally carries over to primetime with series such as Fielder’s docu-comedy The Rehearsal, whose second season premieres April 20. Keeping the budget in check lowers the performance threshold a series has to hit to be considered a success, allowing creators to be less broad, something Fielder has been doing with The Rehearsal, even more so in Season 2.
“He was able to do wild things this season and be a little more, in a way, niche in his comedy with not as much of a burden on it as far as the audience goes,” Gravitt said.
Looking to strike a balance between broader Sunday night shows and more narrow alternatives, she revealed that there are a few more modestly budgeted comedies in the works.
Max comedy brand
Since August 2022, Gravitt also has been overseeing original comedy series for streamer Max. She has pretty much a blank slate — and a great building block to start with, the reigning Emmy and Golden Globe winner for Outstanding Comedy Series Hacks, which is returning for a fourth season. Following the recent cancellation of Bookie, Max only has Sex and the City sequel …And Just Like That on the docket, with Sex Lives Of College Girls awaiting word on its future.
Busy with rebuilding HBO’s comedy slate, Gravitt is yet to put her stamp on Max originals but she gave an indication of the direction she will be taking, pointing to The Big Bang Theory spinoff from franchise steward Chuck Lorre, which has not been formally greenlighted but is fully expected to.
“I think Big Bang is actually a really good example of what a Max comedy should be,” she said. “It’s exciting to work with Chuck, and it is an amazing property that will naturally fit in. As things come in, we’re taking a look where they make sense. Obviously, it’s been a moment to replenish the HBO comedy slate, and I’m really excited about what we have.”
Un-curb Your Enthusiasm?
At the February 2024 premiere of the 12th and final season of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, Gravitt told Deadline that the writer-comedian had not spoken to HBO about another series but she would “love that.”
Thirteen months later, Gravitt has an update, and it’s an encouraging one.
“We’ve been chatting. It seems like like he’s got some ideas for me,” she said.
