The college humor magazine is one of those institutions that still retains a bit of its last-century prestige in the comedy nerd world, a place where young talents fester and grow, eventually hatching into the Simpsons writers of the world of tomorrow. In tribute to that beautiful, awkward life cycle, HBO has announced that it’s developing a new comedy series about those would risk everything to really “stick it” to that fussy old Dean—usually via a satirical essay or ribald cartoon—centering on a secret society organizing an underground humor magazine at a prestigiously conservative Christian college.
Titled Brotherhood, the new series is being written by Hand To God playwright Robert Askins, based off of his own membership in a similar group at Texas’ famously Jesus-loving Baylor University. Wearing its Animal House influences on its sleeve, Askins’ show—which he’s producing alongside Man Seeking Woman and Portlandia’s Jon Krisel—will feature characters representing a slightly more literary take on the old snobs-versus-slobs conflict, united as they are in their twin goals to “party harder than anyone else and write the funniest, most incisive campus humor magazine in history.” (We can’t wait for the scene where the members of the brotherhood disrupt a big community parade with a well-deployed bilingual, palindromic pun.)