Edit: Video removed by YouTube. Sorry. But take my word for it – it was funny.
BTW, if you don’t already know about Nobody’s Watching…well, you could almost call it ‘the little TV show that could’. (Or ‘the little TV show that didn’t, then went viral, then finally got a chance’.) Created by Bill Lawrence (Scrubs), the pilot followed two guys from Ohio who are obsessed with sitcoms, but think none of the modern sitcoms are any good. They journey out to LA to pitch their ‘perfect sitcom’ to the (now-defunct) WB Network, and – astonishingly – land jobs creating and writing the series…except that they’re REALLY the unwitting subjects of the WB’s latest reality show. (It’s much more clever than it sounds.)
Anyway, a pilot was originally shot for the real-life (now-defunct) WB Network, but the show wasn’t picked up. Eventually, the pilot found its way to YouTube (in three parts – 1, 2, 3), and the show gained fans and supporters. Eventually, NBC (who shot down the concept pre-pilot) caught on and picked up the show – probably on the strength of the pilot, as well as the pedigree of Lawrence (and, possibly, guilt for all those times “Scrubs” nearly got cancelled). I’m a fan of the pilot, and I’m looking forward to the new episodes since “Nobody’s Watching”, like The Office, before it, is a new spin on the situation comedy. It may do well, or it may fail spectacularly, but either way, it’s nice to see someone taking risks on network TV.
It might just be my imagination, but it seems that being stuck in 4th place has NBC turning the camera inward for the upcoming season – “Nobody’s Watching”, “30 Rock”, and “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” are all TV about TV. Thankfully, all three look promising. (TiVo, don’t fail me now…)
What risk? It seems to me like they’re taking a safe bet by having shot down a show they thought was risky, but then picking up a show that proved itself in a viral way without them having to spend the money to find out if it would prove itself. Granted, Internet popularity doesn’t guarantee success (look at Snakes on a Plane), but it certainly is a safer bet than a completely untested script for a pilot.
It’s risky in that it’s an untested format in prime time, and in general, networks shy away from anything untested. (That’s how something like “According to Jim” or “Two and a Half Men” gets on the air.) I can probably count on one hand the number of network sitcoms over the past five years that have strayed in any meaningful fashion from the tried-and-true three-camera-plus-laughtrack formula.