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ROOMMATES have found a whole new way of hogging the TV. Of the 15 new, live-action network sitcoms this season, four are about young women in awkward roommate situations, writes Tim Molloy.
Strangers bound together by rent is a TV formula as familiar as The Odd Couple, and it’s tempting to say it’s having its moment this season because of a bad economy and the breakdown of traditional families. Are writers and network executives reflecting a new world in which near-strangers are the new relatives?
Not exactly.
First, let’s look at the new shows: The New Girl, about a newly single girl played by Zooey Deschanel who moves in with three guys, was one of the best received by writers at the Television Critics Association summer press tour.
Two Broke Girls finds a street-smart waitress (Kat Dennings) allowing a former rich girl (Beth Behrs) to move in with her after the rich girl’s dad loses his fortune. It is co-created by Whitney star and creator Whitney Cumming.
ABC’s midseason Apartment 23 follows a naive Midwesterner, June (Dreama Walker), who moves in with the unscrupulous Chloe (Krysten Ritter). James Van Der Beek is along for the fun as himself.
NBC’s midseason Best Friends Forever features a just-divorced woman (Jessica St Clair) who moves in with her best friend (Lennon Parham) and her new boyfriend.
A fifth sitcom, NBC’s Whitney, is about a happily cohabitating, unmarried couple.
Mitch Metcalf, NBC’s former head of scheduling, says an increase in roommate shows corresponds to a drop in sitcoms about traditional families.
The rare modern family show that thrives – like Modern Family – does it by questioning traditional familial roles. The coming season includes several shows, including Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing, about men trying to find their place in a less paternalistic world.
Shows like Friends and Seinfeld, began to boom in the 1990s, supplanting family hits like The Cosby Show.
The trend has accelerated as cable options have carved up the TV audience into one where shows no longer have to appeal to children, teens and adults all at once. Children now have their own networks, leaving prime-time shows to focus more on young adults, Metcalf said.
“Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s there were more traditional family units on television, and that was partly because teens and kids were still an important contingency for network viewing,” he said.
“The networks just really got out of the kid and teen business, and look for an 18-plus or 25-plus grouping.”
In an industry that thrives on ‘safe’, roommate shows are an easy sell.
It doesn’t hurt, when pitching a show about room mates, to note that the two most popular sitcoms on television – Chuck Lorre’s Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, both on CBS – are about potentially loaded living situations.
Two and a Half Men forces an earnest single dad and his son to live with a freewheeling bachelor – though Charlie Sheen’s off-screen shenanigans are about to create a vacancy. Ashton Kutcher will move into the CBS hit as a heartbroken billionaire.
Big Bang Theory, meanwhile, follows the emotional entanglements of an attractive girl and her two nerdy neighbours. (Fans will attest that it’s about so much more than that – friendship, physics, love – but it’s all built around a living situation).
