NBC’s complicated, on-again-off-again relationship with comedy looks to be heading for the on-stage once more. After NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt announced his desire to have another hit comedy on the network at last week’s TCA presentation, Deadline reports that NBC is going to test the waters with a pair of “couples comedy” pilots. The first, People Are Talking, is created by Up All Night’s executive producer DJ Nash. Deadline claims the show will take a pair of couples—one white and one black—and have them examine “sex, race and everything else your parents told you never to talk about.”
The second, Take It From Us, will be headed by Greg Marlins, an executive producer on both Friends and How I Met Your Mother, the type of comedy hits NBC is pining for. Take It From Us will tread similar ground to HIMYM; billed as a “love story told in flashbacks,” it’s about an older couple doling out advice to their son and his fiancée about the wild, wacky times they had in the ’90s. The show harkens back to a simpler time, a time when NBC could take a comedy show out for coffee and see if they hit it off, only to have it blossom into the type of long-running, syndication deal its parents had.