Monday, December 06, 2010

Cheech Marin Makes Another Attempt at a Sitcom

In what would be be his first comedy series gig in almost 20 years, Cheech Marin is set to co-star on Fox's half-hour pilot Outnumbered.

Inspired by the BBC sitcom, Outnumbered, which is being directed by Larry Charles, revolves around one set of parents Sue (Ana Ortiz) and Pete (Cliff Chamberlain) who are often overwhelmed by their three children. Marin will play Sue's dad, who is taking a pharmacopoeia of prescription pills and believes that sometimes the kids could use a good swat. Marin's only major previous comedy series gig was his role on the Golden Girls spinoff The Golden Palace. The Nash Bridges alum recently did an arc on ABC's Lost and co-starred in Robert Rodriguez's Machete.

"Larry wrote a fantastic script," said MRC TV topper Keith Samples. "Everything fell into place; it had a karmic feel to it. Kevin loved the original and loved what Larry did with the adaptation."

An unbroadcast pilot has been made and further scripts have been written. The pilot will be broadcast, but a date has yet to be given.

Some fast facts:
Golden Girls was a horrible sitcom and a horrible failure.  It aired on CBS.
Larry Charles was set to direct the Cheech and Chong reunion film which was written by Tommy's daughters.
New Line Cinema, the film studio, scrapped the film after Tommy was arrested.
Larry Charles left the project to do Borat, a huge success.
Larry Charles wrote for Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld.
Cheech's last attempt at a sitcom was Fox TV's The Ortegas.
Fox kept postponing the show because it was terrible.  Back then, most shows on Fox were terrible so this was really terrible.
The Ortegas was originally an NBC show, but they decided they didn't want it.

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