Carol Burnett Returning To TV

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Two comedy greats are combining their talents for a new pilot for ABC. Carol Burnett will star in a new comedy series being produced by Amy Poehler. The series received a put pilot commitment from the network after a bidding war between broadcast television outlets and streaming services which all wanted a piece of the comedy legend returning to television.

The multi-camera sitcom is still untitled and so far Carol Burnett is the only name attached to the cast. The show is described as being about “a family who gets a chance to buy the house of their dreams — a house they’d never be able to afford under normal circumstances, but is able to under extremely abnormal circumstances. They must live with the current owner, an older actress (Burnett) — until she dies.”

The thought of Carol Burnett playing an older actress immediately brings thoughts of the character Nora Desmond the silent film star, which she created as a spin on Norma Desmond, Gloria Swanson’s character from the classic film, Sunset Boulevard. One exciting aspect of the new series is what Carol Burnett does with her character. Creating fictional and hilarious alter-egos is one the comedy icon’s strengths. On “The Carol Burnett Show”, she brought to life characters like Eunice Higgins (which spun-off “Mama’s Family”), Marion the tragic soap opera heroine from “As the Stomach Turns”, the Latin bombshell Chiquita, the inept secretary Mrs. Wiggins and Stella Toddler the accident prone slapstick senior citizen.

The new series will be written by and executive produced along with Amy Poehler by Michael Saltzman (Murphy Brown, Mad Men) who told Deadline, “I grew up like millions of other people watching The Carol Burnett Show, and idolizing Carol. It wasn’t just the hilarious parodies; her Q&As just showed her to be this warm, funny, relatable person. And then the very first meeting I had when I was trying to break into television as a writer was with Carol, who was exactly the same person in real life as she was on TV.”

According to Saltzman, it was Carol Burnett who launched his career. He said “Through an incredible act of kindness and generosity, she gave me my start. In our meeting, Carol offered praise and encouragement, which by itself was amazing, but she then elevated things to a truly surreal level when she presented a check with no contract or conditions. Her only instruction was to write anything- a play, a musical, a TV show, a movie, a poem. It didn’t matter. She just wanted to give someone she believed in their start.”

Carol Burnett is obviously no stranger to successful television. Her variety series won 8 Golden Globes and 25 Primetime Emmy Awards with a lot of the hardware going to Burnett herself as well as cast members Tim Conway, Harvey Korman and Vicki Lawrence. She’s also won a Peabody Award, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. It was the SAG Award that Carol Burnett was presented with by now co-worker Amy Poehler along with Tina Fey which you can see below.

No word yet on when the comedy series will go into production.

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Ernie Tripper

Ernie Tripper