Ontario's Jay Baruchel is one of Hollywood’s secret weapons, adding just the right awkward-lite touch to every movie he stars in, from ensemble comedies like This is the End and Tropic Thunder to indie thrillers like Fetching Cody and Good Neighbors. Television viewers will soon be able to get their weekly Baruchel quota now that FXX has put in a 10-episode series order for the half-hour comedy series Man Seeking Woman. Expect more chuckle aches than heartbreaks with this one.
Man Seeking Woman is based on humor author Simon Rich’s 2013 story collection The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories, and Rich himself is writing the pilot, as well as taking on executive producer and showrunner duties. Beyond several award-winning books, Rich was also a writer for Saturday Night Live for several years before heading off to work as a writer for Pixar. This will be his first non-sketch series.
In the show, which is coming from Lorne Michael’s Broadway Video, Baruchel will play Josh Greenberg, the quintessential guy who’s searching for love in all the wrong places. After his longtime girlfriend breaks up with him, he falls back into the dating world with often disastrous results. But he pushes forward, even in the face of constant unhappiness, hoping that someone exists out there that might make him happy. (We've seen him do something like this before in the fantastic series Undeclared.) Baruchel will be joined by co-stars Britt Lower (Unforgettable), Maya Erskine (Betas) and Eric André (The Eric André Show), one of the zaniest comedians out there.
The first episode will be directed by fellow SNL vet Jonathan Krisel, who has most recently found his calling as a writer/director on Portlandia and Kroll Show. He’ll also serve as an executive producer along with Andrew Singer and Lorne Michaels.
2014 has given audiences a nice selection of Baruchel roles to choose from, as he’s been in José Padilha’s RoboCop remake, Jonathan Sobol’s crime caper The Art of the Steal, Dan Fogler and Michael Canzoniero’s surreal comedy drama Don Peyote, and he is also the voice of the maturing Hiccup in the recently released How to Train Your Dragon 2. As for future projects, he'll be seen in Cameron Crowe’s upcoming untitled rom-com as well as an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story 10 O’clock People.
According to Deadline, FXX is planning on bringing Man Seeking Woman to audiences at some point in 2015. Maybe around Valentine’s Day? We’ll see.
