CBS orders four comedy pilots

CBS’s Ghosts will be based on a BBC original

US cablenet CBS has ordered four comedy pilots for its 2020/21 slate, including one from the creators of Will & Grace.

Please Hold for Frankie Wolfe is from Will & Grace co-creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan and produced by Universal Television.

The show follows a powerful businesswoman who is faced with the decision whether or not to take in a child cast out by her neurotic sister who had attempted to foster him.

Second is an as-yet untitled comedy from exec producers and writers Corinne Kingsbury (In the Dark) and John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (Spider-Man: Homecoming).

It follows a couple who, after their careers take off at the same time, call on the wife’s single mother to help look after their son, only to realise she needs more raising than he does.

Aaron Kaplan and Dana Honor of Kapital Entertainment will also exec produce, alongside Wendi Trilling. CBS Television Studios produces.

The Three of Us, from writer and exec producer Frank Pines, is about a group of adult siblings to divorced parents who must unite when one of the sibling’s husbands reveals he wants a divorce. James Corden, Ben Winston and Jeff Grosvenor of Fulwell 73 also exec produce, with CBS Television Studios producing.

The final pilot is Ghosts, an adaptation of the BBC1 series of the same name, written and exec produced by Joe Port and Joe Wiseman. In the show, a struggling young couple’s dreams come true when they inherit a beautiful country house, only to discover it is falling apart and haunted by the deceased former residents.

Original series creators Mathew Baynton, Jim Howick, Simon Farnaby, Laurence Rickard, Ben Willbond and Martha Howe-Douglas will exec produce with Alison Carpenter, Debra Hayward and Alison Owen of Monumental Television and Angie Stephenson of BBC Studios. CBS Television Studios will produce in association with Lionsgate Television and BBC Studios.