Night Court ended 2024 with a special holiday episode, with Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Joe Lo Truglio and Mad TV’s Andy Daly as guest stars. Initially, Lo Truglio’s return to network TV seemed to be as another NYPD detective, but the first twist came with the reveal that he was actually an actor in a murder mystery… followed by the second twist that Detective Kratz as well as Daly’s vacuum salesman/actor Fred Norton were both angels. When I spoke with the actors about the episode, Lo Truglio pitched some spinoff ideas that I love ahead of the 2025 TV schedule.
The NBC sitcom isn’t exactly the most supernatural or ethereal show on television, so the angelic reveal at the end of the Christmas episode definitely was unexpected. (You can find the holiday special streaming with a Peacock subscription now.) Of course, Night Court is a multi-cam sitcom in front of a live studio audience and therefore quite different from Joe Lo Truglio’s sitcom experience on the single-cam Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but I for one thought it was great to have him back on network TV.
So, with the idea of him returning to network TV beyond just as a one-off guest star, I needed his take: do his and Andy Daly’s Night Court characters need a spinoff? Lo Truglio had some ideas, and they didn’t involve John Larroquette dressed as a southern belle again. He said:
As long as we can play angels, I think that's a great idea. Me and Andy Daly as angels that come in and come down to Earth and portray either vacuum salesmen and/or detectives or other jobs, I think is a terrific, terrific idea for a spinoff. [laughs]
Considering that Joe Lo Truglio and Andy Daly are real-life friends who also worked together on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, it’s fun to consider the idea of them in an angelic Night Court spinoff. Or at least a series of web shorts! Surely I can’t be the only one who would watch that. The Superbad cast alum had another idea to pitch:
Or we're the two guys at the heavenly gates. We can just call it 'Heavenly Gates,' and we're the ones kind of in charge of letting people in. I would pitch that as well and watch it.
His second pitch even came with a working title! Of course, since I had the opportunity to speak with both Night Court guest stars, I had to get Andy Daly’s pitch as well. When I asked if his and Joe Lo Truglio’s characters needed a spinoff, he responded:
Yes, we do. They've already done Highway to Heaven, but I think a Highway to Heaven reboot with me and Joe going around saving the souls of cynical, sarcastic, sitcom characters would be fantastic.
Some reboots are more or less copies of the original; this take on Highway to Heaven definitely would stand on its own. I also like to imagine the crossover potential with NBC’s other sitcoms. Jon Cryer’s Extended Family may have been cancelled, but the network debuted St. Denis Medical and Happy’s Place as new additions to the primetime lineup in the fall.
Throw in the return of Lopez vs. Lopez for Season 3, and there are plenty of options. Why not even Brooklyn Nine-Nine? The show may have ended, but the characters’ stories weren’t over. Plus, Melissa Fumero appeared on Night Court last season. I shared Andy Daly’s pitch with Joe Lo Truglio, who immediately laughed and said:
I'm in! I love it. I think that's a grand idea.
Is Joe Lo Truglio going to make a full-time return to network TV as co-lead of an angelic Night Court spinoff alongside Andy Daly? Almost certainly not, but it’s fun to imagine what the pitches of two comedy greats would look like in primetime. Besides, Night Court won’t be back from winter break until Tuesday, January 14 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC, so fans can take all the fun they can get as the wait continues. Check out a clip from their episode of Season 3 below:
You can catch up on and/or revisit all of Night Court Season 3 so far streaming on Peacock now, as well as find all eight seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine for Joe Lo Truglio’s previous gig on NBC. A couple more weeks are left before hiatus ends, so the time is right to stream the series if you’re in the mood for a sitcom fix.
