by JASMINE ELSHAMY Editor-in-Chief
For all you “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared” fans, Netflix announced on September 16 that Judd Apatow is headed back to television screen. The comedy movie tycoon has created a new relationship comedy, “Love,” starring Paul Rust (“I Love You Beth Cooper”) and Gillian Jacobs (“Community”) that has been bought by Netflix for a two-season straight-to-series pick up.
The description of the show reads: “‘Love’ follows Gus (Rust) and Mickey (Jacobs) as they navigate the exhilaration and humiliations of intimacy, commitment, and other things they were hoping to avoid.”
Netflix ordered a 10-episode first season and 12-episode second season. Apatow co-created and wrote the series with Rust and “Brooklyn 99” writer Lesley Arfin, with season one debuting in 2016.
Apatow Productions and Legendary Television will be producing the show, and “The Office” and “The Simpsons” veteran Brent Forrester will be joining Apatow, Rust, and Arfin as executive producer.
“Judd Apatow has a unique comedic voice that manages to be delightful, insightful, and shockingly frank — often at the same time,” said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos. “Together with Paul and Lesley, he’s bringing a whole new level of agony and ecstasy to this modern day comedy of manners.”
As can be seen from watching his films, Apatow enjoys bringing people he has worked with before to work with him on new projects, so this is not the first time that he works with these writers and producers.
Apatow produces the Lena Dunham’s HBO comedy “Girls,” a show Arfin used to write for, and Jacobs recently guest-starred in. Furthermore, Apatow is producing a movie written by Rust, and he and Forrester used to work together on “Undeclared” and co-created a pilot together in 2002 called “Life On Parole.”
“I really like Judd Apatow. ‘Knocked Up’ is one of my favorite movies of all time! Same with ‘Bridesmaids’ and ‘This is 40.’ He could definitely create some great stuff for Netflix,” says senior Christa Tomasulo. “I hope he casts his wife [Leslie Mann] in it!”
The fact that Netflix gave Apatow a straight-to-series pickup deal alone is a big deal. That is what they gave to David Fincher and Kevin Spacey for “House of Cards,” and that is the show that reeled the viewers into their original content.
There was actually talk about which streaming service was buying the show back in June, when it was originally thought that maybe Hulu would nab the deal to try and give them a sharper competitive edge in the original content department against Netflix and Amazon.
“Netflix has definitely changed the way I watch TV. I don’t find myself watching the actual TV that often because most of the time I’m watching what I want to watch on Netflix,” says sophomore Chelsea Algoo. “They’re opening doors and being really smart about bringing shows like ‘Orange is the New Black’ and now this Judd Apatow one over to them.”
It is really exciting and amazing to see how much original content from streaming services, Netflix especially, is dominating and influencing how we consume television. If someone told me in 2008 that a television show that you could only watch on the Internet was nominated for 12 Emmys (cough cough “Orange is the New Black” cough cough), I would have laughed in your face. Probably out of nervousness, really, because I was only 10 at the time, and I was (am) a big dope.
Not just that, but Neflix gives their original shows a lot of freedom and trust to create the content that they want to create. There are not too many big shot network executives marching into Apatow’s writer’s room and telling him how to run his show after just giving it to him.
Hopefully with “Love,” Apatow will not have to face the disappointment that he did when both “Undeclared” and “Freaks and Geeks” were canceled. This is a new and exciting age, with an added generation of viewers who are addicted to Netflix just waiting to binge watch another funny, quirky romantic comedy TV show to procrastinate studies and responsibilities.
What do you think of Apatow’s new series coming to Netflix?