IFC is already home to masterful talk show parody Comedy Bang! Bang!, but it looks like the network is about to dip its toe into the real thing. The network has ordered pilots from Community and Rick and Morty‘s Dan Harmon, standup and Louie regular Jim Norton, and comedian Sara Schaefer.
Harmon’s pilot, Great Minds, sounds like an inspired marriage of @midnight and Another Period, staffing a straightforward panel show entirely with comedians playing historical characters. Norton’s untitled project sounds more like a talk show in the vein of Totally Biased, with whom it shares executive producer Suzanne Fagel, and Schaefer’s 1320 Seconds will be a news satire show staffed entirely by female correspondents, “plus one man to make everyone feel okay about this dangerous concept.”
Assuming (safely, we think) one of these pilots gets a series order, IFC will be entering into an increasingly crowded—and Internet-oriented—late night landscape, which now includes @midnight, The Nightly Show, and soon, new incarnations of both The Late Show and The Daily Show. Either way, the news is sure to please Harmon and Norton’s dedicated fan bases, not to mention those who’ve been critical of late night’s overwhelmingly male makeup.