Fox recently picked up new half-hour animated series Housebroken, which was formerly known as Therapy Dog and is set to star Lisa Kudrow, Clea Duvall, and Nat Faxon. The show is the brainchild of Duvall (Veep, American Horror Story) along with writer-producers Jennifer Crittenden, Gabrielle Allan, (Veep, Divorce) Sharon Horgan, (Catastrophe, Divorce) and Aaron Kaplan of Kapital Entertainment (A Million Little Things, Divorce).
The plan is to keep the show as a co-production between Kapital and Fox Entertainment and it marks Kapital’s first animated series. Fox’s recently acquired animation house Bento Box (Bob’s Burgers) also will co-produce Housebroken as well as provide the animation.
This is just the first of many new animated shows headed to Fox, with the first being, Bless the Harts, which debuted this fall and has already been picked up for a second season. Next shows to follow are said to be Duncanville and The Great North.
DuVall, Crittenden and Allan share writing credits for Housebroken, which has been described as an irreverent comedy that explores human dysfunction and neurosis through a group of neighborhood animals who live in the suburbs. Duvall and Horgan also provide voices, in addition to such familiar faces as Will Forte, Tony Hale, Jason Mantzoukas, Sam Richardson, Bresha Webb and Greta Lee.
According to Deadline, the idea for the show originated from DuVall, who has been a recurring character on Veep since the fifth season. It started with a conversation on set with Crittenden and Allan in where Duvall shared that she felt she and her cat would get along much better if they could understand one another. That eventually led to the premise for a therapy dog animated comedy. With DuVall, Crittenden and Allan all being dog owners themselves, they then took their excited idea to longtime collaborators Horgan and Kaplan.