Two TV comedy veterans are creating starring vehicles for themselves at HBO.
Last week brought news that Sarah Silverman and Sarah Jessica Parker are developing new series around the under-explored topic of the female midlife crisis. Silverman will star and is executive-producing an untitled comedy with Lucy Prebble (Diary of a Call Girl) about a “pathologically honest” woman at a crossroads in her forties. It sounds rather far from Silverman’s previous show, the (brilliant) Sarah Silverman Program, which ran for three seasons on Comedy Central — and thus something to look forward to from the versatile performer. Silverman won an Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special Emmy earlier this year for her comedy special We Are Miracles, which aired on HBO.
Parker, too, is eyeing a return to the prestige cable network. Nearly a dozen years after Sex and the City ended its run, Parker is ready to explore another facet of modern womanhood with a comedy called Divorce. The Glee guest star will play a woman flirting with the idea of ending her marriage when her husband discovers the affair she’s having and initiates a separation. Should the series get picked up, it would be produced by Parker and showrun by Sharon Horgan.