If you’re a comedy writer with either The Daily Show or Saturday Night Live among your credits, there’s a very good chance that at some point in your career, you’ll get the chance to either write a really bad movie (It’s Pat!) or create your own TV show (30 Rock, Parks and Recreation). So it seems quite logical that CBS has just closed separate deals with alumni of both fine New York-–based comedy institutions: Tim Carvell and Andy Breckman.
Vulture has learned that Carvell, a former Entertainment Weekly writer who’s toiled on Jon Stewart’s humor plantation since 2004, has snagged a script order for an untitled half-hour about a 32-year-old man who suddenly realizes there’s a giant generation gap when his 23-year-old little sister starts working for his company. Carvell’s project is being shepherded at CBS by executive producer Anthony Edwards, whose Grand Central Entertainment is based at CBS’s sister studio. (Perhaps the former ER star will find comedic inspiration from deep in his past.) CBS in recent years has become almost obsessed with Daily Show staffers, developing at least two or three projects each year with folks from Team Stewart. In the hopper this season: a family comedy from correspondent Josh Gad and a real-estate-themed half-hour starring ex-reporter Rob Riggle.
Meanwhile, Vulture can also break the news that former SNL scribe Andy Breckman — who’s perhaps better known now as the creator of USA’s long-running Monk — has landed at CBS with a potential sitcom called Big Dreams. The show will use fantasy sequences to contrast a family guy’s anticipation of life events with how said events actually turn out. Producing the show with Breckman is his manager, Howard Klein, who’s also exec producer of The Office and Parks and Recreation. Already, the CBS comedy slate is looking a lot less @#*!-ty to us.
