Sanctuary Family Comedy In Works At ABC As Immigration Projects Remain Hot
With the topic of immigration firmly in the headlines, most recently over President Donald Trump’s decision yesterday to end the DACA program, it has become a very popular subject for TV series projects this season.
The latest is an untitled single-camera comedy (aka Sanctuary Family), which has received a script plus penalty commitment at ABC.
Written by David Feeney (New Girl, 2 Broke Girls) and to be directed by Christine Gernon (Speechless, New Girl), the comedy revolves around a hard-bitten husband and empathetic wife who butt heads over the chaos created when they provide sanctuary for their undocumented nanny and her family — and come to learn, if their marriage survives, that the differences both families have aren’t as significant as their similarities. Feeney and Gernon executive produce for 20th Century Fox TV.
The David Feeney comedy joins several other recently set-up projects that tackle the subject of immigrants, including the undocumented.
Gina Rodriguez is producing two such projects at the CW and CBS. They are Illegal, a dramedy about the family of a teenager who was brought to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant when he was a child, and Have Mercy, which centers on a Latina doctor who’s unable to practice when she immigrates to Miami.
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CBS also bought comedy Welcome to Maine, from Austen Earl and Greg Garcia, which centers on a ninth-generation Maine family and a recent immigrant and his daughter who all must learn to embrace change when they share the same workplace in a tiny rural town.
Fox has In the Country We Love, about a woman whose family had been deported to Colombia, based on the memoir by Jane the Virgin‘s Diane Guerrero (it was at CBS last season). And Brad Weston’s Makeready has Undocumented America, drama based on a manuscript by journalist — and DACA beneficiary — Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, with Jonás Cuarón writing.
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