Fox’s Animal Control—the clearest answer to the question “Hey, what’s Joel McHale been up to lately?” since 2023 and counting—has now just officially kept that streak alive. Per Variety, Fox revealed tonight that it’s renewing the sitcom, which also stars Vella Lovell, Michael Rowland, Ravi R. Patel, and Grace Palmer as an animal control crew operating out of Seattle, keeping animals off the streets, and McHales in network TV paychecks. The series, which wrapped up its third season back in March, will now formally be back for a fourth, presumably arriving this fall.
Meanwhile, McHale’s former co-worker Danny Pudi also kept his job at Fox (in this case, after having another gig, Apple’s Mythic Quest, dry up earlier this year). Pudi co-stars on first-season sitcom Going Dutch, opposite Denis Leary and Taylor Misiak, who play a father-daughter pair who have to run a military base in The Netherlands together. (Which is, at least, fairly novel in the grand pantheon of “old dad, progressive daughter, why can’t they get along?!” generational comedies.) Which will now become a second-season sitcom, having also scored a renewal. The series also stars Hal Cumpston and Laci Mosley, so good news for the Scam Goddess CONgregation out there.
Worth noting that the two shows are the only live-action comedies on the network—and, unlike most of its big animated shows, which were acquired as part of the Disney deal back in 2019—both are actually produced in-house in Fox. Hence, possibly, the nigh-fawning gratitude from network president Michael Thorn, who attributed the show’s successes “to signature Fox characters brought to life by Joel and Denis.” (Also, the network was quick to point out that, while ratings for neither series are stellar, they both do much, much better in next-day streaming.)
