TNT has officially agreed to air a pilot from Parks and Recreation alum Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. The series, titled The Claw, is an hour-long dramatic comedy focused around a nail salon based in Southern Florida.
Described by Variety as a “midnight-dark, wickedly-dark meditation on female badness,” The Claw thrusts the power of women into the spotlight. The show will be entirely female-run, as the characters are only manicurists as a ruse. These five women, the casting of which is still yet to be determined as the show is still in very early days, are actually the quintuple-co-leaders of an Floridian crime organization. By kicking male influence entirely to the curb, The Claw will strive to whip a new spin on what mob bosses look like which, up until now, have been uncannily all male.
The show had been originally signed by HBO and designed as a half-hour comedy. The Claw team were able to extend each episode when TNT decided to pick it up, effectively lengthening the show and garnering more room to work with plot and character. This is not the first time HBO’s restraints on episode length has caused a show to move on to the Turner family either.
Another show, a drama called Will depicting the rambunctious, drunken William Shakespeare as he was–we assume–in his twenties, was also collected by TNT when its relationship with HBO hit the rocks. That pilot, if it survives that vulnerable stage, will likely air alongside a developed Claw in the fall or winter premiere block sometime in the near future.
The Claw signifies Rashida Jones’s expanse into executive producing, as well as her first step out of the light as she will most likely not be acting in this series. As Parks and Recreation completed in early 2015, Jones has done work voice acting in Seth Myers’s animated superhero show The Awesomes as well as the popular Pixar film Inside Out. Jones has also starred on another Turner channel series, TBS’s Angie Tribeca as, of course, Angie Tribeca.
McCormack, on the other hand, is a tried and tested executive producer already. His hand in the 2012 movie Celeste and Jesse forever came in the form of behind-the-scenes and in front of the camera; it also happens to be the setting for his first working relationship with Jones, who starred in the lead female role.
The two are also in the midst of co-producing a multi-camera comedy for NBC called Good Fortune, which is set to debut in the fall.
Eliot Laurence (Welcome to Me, The Big Gay Sketch Show) has also been brought on to write the script for the Claw‘s pilot, as well as co-executive produce with Jones and McCormack.
The Claw‘s half-drama status marks a growing trend at TNT, who has been putting more energy behind highlighting a dramatic feel to the show lineup as of late.