Bravo Adds Two Fem-centric Scripted Dark Comedies

Karen Veazey September 22nd, 2015 - 11:17 PM

Last year the network that made their name on reality shows from Inside the Actors Studio to Manzo’d With Children mixed things up by adding a scripted show. The audience seemed to like it and now Bravo TV is adding 2 more scripted shows, billed as hour-long dark comedies and both centered on strong female central characters. Variety reports that True Fiction and My So Called Wife are in development from Universal Cable Productions, a subsidiary of NBC and the company behind Psych (USA), Warehouse 13 (Syfy), and the current hit Mr. Robot (USA).

(With the recent Emmy Awards it’s interesting to note that for awards purposes the Academy considers comedies to be half-hour and dramas to be hour-long programs, though producers can appeal to have any show entered into the opposite category. If Bravo is lucky, they may have to make such an appeal for their new, hour-long comedy programs.)

UCP also created Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce for Bravo, an hour-long drama based on the book series by Vicki Iovine. The show was the network’s first foray into scripted programming in more than a decade and has pulled an average of 800,000 viewers per episode. The series premiered in December 2014 and was followed by comedy series Odd Mom Out this summer. Both series, as well as the upcoming comedies focus on strong female characters and relationships. Girlfriends’ stars Lisa Edelstein (House M.D.) and is produced by Marti Noxon, co-creator of Lifetime’s surprise hit UnREAL. Odd Mom Out stars Jill Kargman satirizing her own life as a mother trying to navigate the excessive lifestyle of New York’s Upper East Side.

Odd moms are the best moms

My So Called Wife follows an equal opportunity con artist who seduces men and women into marrying her, then absconds with their money and information for blackmail. When she falls in love with her most recent target, three of her former victims join forces to track her down. It’s created by Adam Brooks and Paul Adelstein, who most of us know from Private Practice but who also appears in and wrote for Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce. Brooks is set to direct.

True Fiction (working title) is about a novelist/professor desperate for her next publishing success. When her most-arrogant, least-favorite student dies she battles with stealing his work or taking advantage of a juicy secret that is better than any fiction. Brian Dannelly and Michael Urban created the show and Dannelly will direct.

Though Bravo is responsible for Emmy nominated shows like Flipping Out and Top Chef, most people associate the network with popular the Real Housewives series. Though few people readily admit to watching the housewives, the various shows draw between 1.2 and 4.5 million viewers weekly, averaging nearly half those in the critical 18-49 age demographic. Whether Bravo thinks the housewife wave has crested, or is simply expanding into original scripted content in the vein of Hulu and Netflix is unknown, but Lara Spotts, SVP of Development at Bravo commented, “As Bravo expands in the scripted space, we are committed to exploring worlds and characters that are distinctly different from our established slate. [Wife] and True Fiction take us on wild rides as dramatic as they are funny — with one being a quest to uncover the truth and the other a mission to hide it at all costs.”