Esports Comedy TV Shows Coming Soon Courtesy NBC and CBS

Image Courtesy: Polygon | Metro

What a time it is to be an esports fan! Two new comedy TV shows focussed on esports will be debuting on mainstream television in the near future.

NBC’s TV show featuring ‘The Big Bang Theory’ Duo: The Squad

American media giant, NBC has just announced that a new TV show titled ‘The Squad’ focussed around an esports team featuring The Big Bang Theory star Johnny Galecki is being developed. He will also be an executive-producer for this project.

The show will be a multi-camera comedy written by Anthony Del Broccolo who was one of the brains behind ‘The Big Bang Theory’. He has already written the script for the show’s pilot. According to The Hollywood Reporter,

"The Squad revolves around a new group of friends (and sometimes enemies) who find companionship and common ground in their mutual love of esports. The potential series explores what it means to finally find 'your tribe' after years of feeling like an outsider."

While there is no information about when the show will be released or who else will be starring in it, it has been revealed that Warner Bros. TV will produce the show for NBC. Incidentally, Warner Bros. also produced The Big Bang Theory for NBC.

CBS’ comedy show on Rick Fox’s esports career

American Television network CBS is also producing a comedy series with Rick Fox, retired NBA star and founder of Echo Fox.

CBS has reportedly handed a put pilot commitment for this show, which means that the network will face penalties if it does not air the episode. Generally, this guarantees that the pilot will be picked up by the network and be made into a series. According to Variety,

“The untitled single-camera series follows a recently retired pro basketball star who attempts to reconnect with his estranged son by buying an eSports franchise. Dan Kopelman will write and executive produce. Aaron Kaplan and Dana Honor of Kapital Entertainment will also executive produce along with Rick Fox. Warner Bros. Television, where Kopelman is under an overall deal, will serve as the studio.”

Rick Fox will be the executive producer for the series alongside Aaron Kaplan and Dana Honor of Kapital Entertainment. Dan Kopelman, who previously created the CBS sitcom Me, Myself and I, will serve as both writer and executive producer. Warner Bros. Television will be involved with this show as well. 

Although both shows are comedies, they seem like significantly different projects. NBC’s show with multi-cam seems to be targetted towards the larger mainstream audience while CBC’s show with the single-cam format seems to be targeted towards esports fans.

While it is certainly interesting to see two different media networks develop sitcoms based on esports, there are also concerns about whether these comedies may resort to ridiculing esports to appeal to the mainstream audience.

At any rate, it’s interesting nonetheless.