Bassem Youssef and Larry Wilmore Are Developing a Family Superhero Comedy at ABC

Bassem Youssef and Larry Wilmore are teaming up for a new comedy at ABC. Variety reports that the network has put into development an untitled single-cam comedy written and executive produced by Youssef and Wilmore about a Middle Eastern American family with superpowers. Here’s the logline:

The untitled series centers on the Sharif family, an ordinary Middle Eastern American family with two superhero parents at a time when it’s illegal to be a superhero, so they are forced to save the world in secret. The show will highlight some of the issues that immigrant families face when it comes to fitting into a society that many times treats you like the enemy.

“To have ABC challenge the narrative and stereotypes that have long stuck to people in my region is something spectacular to say the least,” Youssef said on the project. “To have only terrorist roles available for us one day, then get to play superheroes the next, is groundbreaking.” Wilmore told Deadline that the show is all about assimilation “and the difficulties and the problems and the conflicts” that come along with it, adding that it would take place in a different US than the one we’re currently living in:  “There won’t be a President Trump. Even through it would be America, it won’t be this version of America, it won’t be a political show in this sense, it will be in its own world.”

Bassem Youssef and Larry Wilmore Are Developing a […]