You also had 30 Rock and Studio 60, two shows about the making of a live comedy show that started at the same time. As I recall, Aaron Sorkin and Studio 60 were touted by many as the one more likely to succeed.
I thought they called it, " ‘MAS*H’ - directed by Alan Alda."
The Office could be turned into a workplace drama pretty easily just by toning down some of the silliness.
I remember reading that Mike O’Malley, who plays Burt Hummel (Kurt’s dad) on Glee, said that while the show is known as a musical comedy where all kinds of crazy things happen, the scenes he’s in might as well be from a show called Sad & Serious. By just editing out the rest of the show, one could turn Glee into a family drama about a blue collar single dad who loves but often does not understand his gay teen son.
I really like this The Darker Side of Community trailer.
As I recall, in Studio 60, a lot of the drama hinged on the show-within-the-show being full of brilliant satire (which was never pulled off). 30 Rock made much of the comedy hinge on the show-within-the-show being dumb.
“Dying is easy; comedy is hard.”
A young man who has lived his life as a petty criminal, substance abuser and general low-life hits bottom and vows to turn his life around.
His hapless suburban parents have cut him out of their lives and will give him no help, so he moves into a seedy motel room with his mildly retarded younger brother. They also share in the day to day struggles and woes of an immigrant sex worker who also has to work as a motel maid in order to make ends meet.
He is the father of two young children, who live with his alcoholic promiscuous ex-wife and her lover, an African -American bar owner with a shady past. The child who bears his name was fathered by her lover while he was married, which lead to the painful break-up of his marriage. He needs to continually be on guard against being manipulated by their scheming ways and to protect his little brother from becoming entangled in their machinations.
Our protagonist is not content with just improving himself, he also embarks on a mission to make amends to everyone he wronged, which makes for a long list. In every episode, he must come face to face with his victims and the harsh results of the physical and psychological damage his past actions caused. The story of this man working for recovery by confronting the suffering he inflicted on others makes for compelling drama indeed.
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My Name is Earl
Not quite the same thing, but imagine How I Met Your Mother as it really is: you’re not actually watching the episodes, you’re not seeing the physical comedy; you’re just sitting there, face-to-face, as your dad keeps patiently explaining why he banged and dumped and lied to yet another chick back when.
“I said A-Bang, Bang, A-Bangity Bang; I said A-Bang-Bang-Bangity-Bang.”
In the depths of the New York City legal system is a place no petty criminal wants to end up.
The prosecuting attorney is a creep and a letch, willing to do almost anything in the hope that a good conviction record will overcome his reputation and lead him to a better post.
The judge, well, some may call him whimsical, but really, he knows that he has his position because nobody else wanted it, so he’s pretty much God.
The defense attorney still shows some youthful idealism, but is constantly tested by the events going on around her.
And the bailiff? He may seem like a gentle giant, but whispers abound about how overly attached he has been known to become with his partners, and how frequently they have turned up dead afterwards.
So be careful if you’re visiting New York City, for you don’t want to risk the justice of the Night Court.
Man slowly goes insane as he imagines his automobile possessing the soul of his deceased mother.
An astronaut has a mental breakdown in which he imagines he has conjured up a beautiful female genie, but his own personal morality prevents him from using her sexually, despite her eagerness to obey his every command. He successfully hides his delusion from his commanders as NASA, but every episode is another close call.
I just remembered that there was a movie made in the '60s that seemed like I Love Lucy remade as a drama (or not very funny dramedy): Shirley McLaine vehicle My Geisha. I happened to catch this on cable once, and though it’s not a particularly good movie my whole family found it oddly fascinating how much it resembled a feature-length I Love Lucy episode minus most of the laughs.
McLaine plays a redheaded comedic actress named Lucy (!) who’s married to Yves Montand, a dark-haired film director with a foreign accent. He’s set to direct a film version of the opera Madame Butterfly, and she wants to be in the show. He understandably feels that a Japanese actress would be better suited to playing the part of a Japanese woman than Shirley McLaine, and heads to Japan. She follows, disguises herself as a geisha, and wins the role as “Yoko”. She successfully keeps up the deception throughout weeks of filming, thus proving that her husband is either dumber or more nearsighted than Ricky.
Weirdly enough, even the Japanese setting and geisha disguise had already been done by Lucille Ball on The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour in the episode “The Ricardos Go to Japan”. Here’s a clip from the show, where Lucy (Lucille Ball) crashes a drinking party her husband is attending with the help of some real geisha. And here’s a clip from the movie, where Lucy (Shirley McLaine) crashes a drinking party her husband is attending with the help of some real geisha.
Here’s the story of a lovely lady who is tricked into a sham marriage by a gay architect. Economically trapped because of her dependent daughters, and not realizing until after the wedding that she’s merely his beard, Carol starts a sordid life of a suburban swinger, addicted to Valium, that '70’s panacea. The architect’s oldest son, Greg, confused in his formative years by a lack of a sexual role model, hits on his new step-mother and his step-sisters.
StG
My fave so far.
This took me a couple of reads, mostly because I forgot Darrin was an adman.
My girlfriend suggested: a man reflects on his loss of innocence during his '60s childhood.
Tom Waits! Does he ever do a guest role? What night is that on? I want to set the TiVo.
Two young men, desperate to find an apartment in San Francisco, pass themselves off as women in order to rent space in a females-only apartment building, only to find that gender-bending and transvestitism begins to make them question their sexual identity.
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A group of aliens, the advance scouts for an invasion force, pass themselves off as a human family in order to spy on their future minions (and, possibly, food source).
“Bosom Buddies” and “Third Rock From the Sun”.
In a small town family in the 1950’s, a clean-cut high school boy befriends a tough punk from a street gang. Despite the tough guy’s background and need for street cred, he sees in the kid’s family what he didn’t have in his own home life. They welcome him in, though things don’t always go smoothly. They spend their evenings hanging out at the local diner, where the tough guy ensures the other kids don’t get picked on, and dispenses street advice.
Everything is great, and nobody notices when the kid’s older brother goes upstairs to his room and is never seen again.
I was gonna try to do “Homeboys In Outer Space”, but I don’t know anything about that show except the title.
A struggling radio station run by the owner’s well-meaning but incompetent lazy son hires an out of towner to come in and change the format from an easy listening adult contemporary music station into a hard rock punk rock and gangsta rap station that attracts thugs and hoodlums as new listeners, forcing the flamboyant but straight and lustful advertising salesman to leave the safety of selling to geriatric care centers and Ensure to enter the seedy world of tattoo parlors and underground clubs, all the while lusting after the hot slutty blonde secretary, who in all fairness, is lusted after by practically everybody else on the show. A white has been disc jockey and a romantic soul brother must now start playing punk rock and eventually gangsta rap to keep up with the bigger stations, while the plain girl (who is actually smoking hot herself but doesn’t realize it) just cannot get anybody to notice her. On the positive side, the nerdy newscaster STILL gets to do lead stories about hog reports, winning the coveted silver sow award! (That could actually be a TWO-PART episode!
I’m pretty sure you all know the show that I’m referring to.
A couple of unlikely international spies are recruited to help out America during the cold war. They are a dim-witted moose and his smarter friend, a flying squirrel. Each week they court dangers from Soviet spies, Fearless East German Leaders, man-eating plants, and yes, even some space aliens, all the while coming out victorious despite the dangers.
No I’m not talking about “24” but that was a good guess.
A sad and lonely man slowly falls into schizophrenia as he comes to believe his horse (which he possesses for some inexplicable reason) is talking to him.