Listen up comedy lovers, a humor legend is about to return to television in a major way. Carol Burnett herself has signed up for a new show.
The, currently untitled, multicamera comedy will focus on a family who gets the opportunity to buy the home of their dreams, a house that they would never be able to actually afford, in exchange for living there with the current owner, an older actress, until she dies. Carol Burnett would, obviously, play the actress who's sharing her home with the family. The sitcom is executive produced by Saturday Night Live vet Amy Poehler, under her Universal Television set production company Paper Kite. The show has landed at ABC, where the network has given the series a large put-pilot commitment, which basically means a pilot is almost completely guaranteed to be filmed for the comedy.
Carol Burnett is, of course, best known for her 11 season run on her eponymous show from 1967 through 1978. The Carol Burnett Show was a variety show that combined occasional song and dance pieces with comedy sketches that consisted of movie parodies and character pieces. Her show, which also starred Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner and Tim Conway, was incredibly popular with critics and TV audiences alike, and produced many memorable characters and sketches that are still well-known to this day. The show won 25 Emmy Awards and also netted numerous Golden Globe Awards.
Burnett began her TV career on The Paul Winchell Show, an NBC variety show, in 1955, and went on to appear in numerous television and film projects, as well as appearing in several plays. Her film and TV credits include The Twilight Zone, Get Smart, The Lucy Show, The Bob Hope Show, Friendly Fire, Annie, Mama's Family, Mad About You (for which she won an Emmy in 1997), Desperate Housewives, Law & Order: SVU, All My Children, Glee, Hot In Cleveland and Hawaii Five-0.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, writer Michael Saltzman, who is said to have idolized Carol Burnett as he grew up, will be handling the script for the pilot. He's written for shows such as Wings, Murphy Brown, The Middle, Hell on Wheels and Halt and Catch Fire.
If ABC picks up the comedy for broadcast it would mark the return to weekly TV acting for Carol Burnett since her comedy anthology show Carol & Company ended in 1991. While Burnett hasn't been completely absent from television in the years since the show she's most known for has been gone, it would certainly be a good thing to have her around on a weekly basis. Comedy legends like her don't settle down for weekly shows that often, and it would be a treat to have Carol Burnett back on TV for a while.
