Can hypochondria be funny? NBC and Nip/Tuck's Ryan Murphy think so. The network has just picked up Murphy's Hyper-chondriac (he sure does love his titles with punctuation!), a half-hour comedy about a pharmaceutical salesman who develops hypochondria in the course of doing his job.
The series is based on the book Hyper-chondriac: One Man's Quest to Hurry Up and Calm Down, a memoir that tracks author Brian Frazer's history with various maladies that all ended up being tied to stress. In Murphy's version, the main character (also named Brian) is a sales rep whose work takes him to various hospitals, where he becomes convinced he's suffering from a whole host of diseases. As in the book, the symptoms are real, but the causes are different.
The pilot is expected to shoot next year. Murphy is already working on Glee, a Fox pilot about glee clubs, plus the remaining seasons of Nip/Tuck.
Between this pilot and a couple of memoirs on bookshelves (both Frazer's and Jennifer Traig's Well Enough Alone), it seems like hypochondria is a hot topic right now. Could you see yourself watching a comedy about it? (And would it just make you think you had some horrible diseases, too?)
Benefit
Charlotte Olympia
Rimmel
I'll watch anything Ryan Murphy touches.
1I'll give it a try. My friend just gave me Jennifer Traig's Well Enough Alone to read on vacation, so this posting came at a perfect time.
2Well, if Monk can make obsessive-compulsiveness funny, I guess there's hope for hypochondria.
3I love ryan murphy he's been so innovative with nip/tuck that I'll give this a go too! I really wanted to see the show that he was doing with Carrie Ann Moss and Joseph Fiennes but oh well...
4My friend got me really into Nip/Tuck, so I'll give this a shot.
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