Patrick Stewart starring in a comedy series from Seth MacFarlane and Jonathan Ames

By Sean O'Neal | April 29, 2014 | 9:30pm

Aux Features TV

Starz has given a two-season, 20-episode order to a Patrick Stewart-starring comedy called Blunt Talk, in which Sir Patrick Stewart rolls a fat blunt, then talks about Star Trek for a half-hour. (Like, why doesn’t anyone just live on the Holodeck?) Or rather, according to the “official” description, it finds Stewart playing Walter Blunt, the host of a British interview show who arrives in the U.S. determined to dominate the airwaves by offering the kind of talk characteristic of his convenient last name, telling Americans nightly how they should live their lives. It’s a comedic spin on a format that already failed once before, when it was called “Piers Morgan.”

Still, it seems primed to succeed this time with the help of its co-producers, Bored To Death’s Jonathan Ames and Seth MacFarlane, who is almost singlehandedly responsible for Stewart’s reinvention as a comedic force by giving him a role on American Dad. Here Stewart will bring that same absurd gravitas to Blunt as he’s surrounded by his ex-wives and children, meddling bosses, and inept co-workers, with his only friend being the alcoholic butler he brought over from the U.K. No one has said that Ian McKellen is playing that butler yet, but we assume it’s just a matter of time.