The network comedy is Not Dead Yet

THE LATEST COMEDY TO JOIN ABC'S PRIME-TIME LINEUP tells what is, in many ways, a familiar story.

- JUDY BERMAN

Like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and both incarnations of One Day at a Time before it, Not Dead Yet follows a woman starting over after a big breakup. Journalist Nell Serrano, played by Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez, introduces herself by way of a headline: LOCAL WOMAN, 37, RUINS OWN LIFE. Fresh off a five-year stint in London that ended in a broken engagement, she's back home in California, with a fussy roommate and a job writing obituaries for the local newspaper she left to chase romance. The twist? She meets the ghosts of her obit subjects.

With its mix of time-honored TV tropes and quirky, attention-grabbing flourishes, Not Dead Yet epitomizes an emerging generation of network comedies. As recently as the fall of 2021, it looked as if Big 5 broadcasters had given up on the format, which thrives on the perhaps outdated assumption that if the jokes are good enough, viewers of all demographics and political persuasions will come together to laugh at them. But a rapidly shifting TV landscape, and one that now allows most networks to efficiently monetize their programming on their own streaming platforms, seems to be encouraging networks to develop series that appeal to younger, more adventurous and progressive streaming audiences as well as if not more than the aging linear viewers who reliably flock to procedural franchises and game-show reboots.