Topher Grace is coming back to TV for a light-hearted family comedy about our current economic hell

By William Hughes | February 15, 2020 | 10:06pm

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Topher Grace is coming back to TV for a light-hearted family comedy about our current economic hell

Photo: Phillip Faraone/FilmMagic

It’s been 15 years since Topher Grace last had a regular TV comedy gig, having spent the intervening decade-and-a-half focusing on movies, mini-series, and getting J.Jonah Jameson those pictures of Spider-Man he’s always screaming about. (Also: Periodic attempts to prove that you can carve a workable set of movies out of the less beloved branches of the Star Wars assemblage of films.) Now, though, it sounds like Grace might be getting back to his roots, with THR reporting that the That ’70s Show star is set to serve as lead in a new comedy pilot for ABC. Titled Home Economics, the series apparently hopes to find the lighter side of America’s devastating class divide, by depicting the lives of three siblings living in three different socio-economic classes. (So, kind of like Modern Family, if that soon-to-be-departing series took place in a universe where poor people existed.)

Grace will reportedly be playing the middle integer of this particular equation, “an intellectual, a novelist who’s had a couple books that sold decently, but his last one did not.” (Say it ain’t so!) Torn between his desire to be like his wealthy older brother, but not like his poor-as-hell sister, the character will presumbably be relateable in that very Topher Grace sort of way, the kind that made such young heartthrobs out of characters like Eric Forman and KKK leader David Duke. The series is being developed by Michael Colton and John Aboud, previously of both Leverage and The Penguins Of Madagascar. Meanwhile, there’s no word yet on who’ll be playing the other two siblings, Richie Moneybags and Ol’ Kathy “How 90 percent or more of the world actually lives.”