Two of the writers who brought the groundbreaking comedy Will & Grace to air have re-teamed for a new family comedy about soccer parents. ABC ordered the pilot for Dream Team, a half-hour, single-camera comedy about soccer parents from Bill Wruble and Kari Lizer.
Wruble had been working as executive producer and writer for ABC’s Modern Family, though he left at the end of the 2014 season to sign a three-year contract with Warner Bros. Television. Before helping to bring the Pritchett/Dunphy clan to life he also served as co-executive producer and writer for ABC’s Ugly Betty.
Lizer served as executive producer and writer for the four season run of The New Adventures of Old Christine on CBS and is also under contract at Warner Bros TV. Prior to Will & Grace she worked as writer or producer for Weird Science, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show, and Maggie Winters.
With Modern Family in its seventh season and newer shows chomping at the bit to derail the show’s streak of Emmy wins, ABC has been looking for a strong, new, family comedy. Dream Team will borrow Family’s biting style as a documentary crew follows the series lead, Coach Marty Schumacher, as he recruits children in an effort to build his next title-winning girls’ club soccer team. According to Deadline, “His last team went to the national championship, and those women are off playing in college, semipro, even the Olympic team. Now Coach Schumacher, who is known as “the star maker” (mostly by himself), has a documentary crew following him around as he assembles his next dynasty from a diverse group of little girls that bring along their diverse families.”
ABC ordered fifteen comedy pilots during the spring pilot season and three have been picked up to series, including family comedies The Real O’Neals and Uncle Buck. The third, Dr. Ken, follows Ken Jeong (Community) as a frustrated HMO doctor juggling medicine, marriage, and parenting, and succeeding at none of them. O’Neals is loosely based on the life of columnist Dan Savage and follows a picture-pefect family after their so comes out of the closet. Uncle Buck revives the beloved 1989 John Candy film with Mike Epps as the loveable-but-irresponsible Buck.