This hysterically written show, created by Mitchell Hurwitz and starring Jason Bateman, Portia DeRossi, David Cross, Jeffrey Tambor, Will Arnett, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale and Jessica Walter nearly fell through the cracks back when it aired on FOX between 2003-2006. The show was narrated by Ron Howard, for crying out loud. The critics loved the show, as this sample demonstrates, and it won six Emmy awards and one Golden Globe, and IGN has listed it as the funniest show of all time.
It fell flat with audiences, however, mainly because FOX didn’t know how to market a show that you had to watch from the first episode to “get”. Smart shows in a 30 minute time slot usually take several shows to develop a story arc, and this was Arrested Development‘s modus operandi. Vito Rispo over at Adsavvy writes a fantastic article about the many reasons why FOX failed to market the show correctly.
Arrested Development had, in my humble opinion, some of the best writing on television at the time, and still makes us laugh with timeless dialogue and insane sight gags. In this age of Honey Boo Boo and Amish Mafia, it is something our society needs to rise out of the mire of moron television. Netflix is currently running Arrested Development (all three seasons) on it’s streaming service, and it can also be viewed by Amazon Prime members and by Hulu plus subscribers. My advice: WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW!
I’m sure we are all tired of hearing about the recession, the fiscal cliff, the increase in taxes (by the way, I’m poor and I saw an increase…the liars!) and it is so good to laugh out loud at television again without feeling like our IQ level has dropped 18 or so points from “reality” television.
The good news is that Arrested Development is coming back and in a big way. In May of this year, Netflix will exclusively stream season 4 of the show, and all the cast members will be making appearances. We are going to find out what happened to the Bluth family, and we can view the show in order or pick and choose episodes to follow the story arcs of our favorite characters. I personally can’t wait, and look forward to more great writing and more hilarious social commentary. It could be the first Netflix run show to win an Emmy…or is it really considered network television?
Related articles
- Secrets From The New Season Of “Arrested Development” (buzzfeed.com)
- New ‘Arrested Development’ to hit Netflix Canada (metronews.ca)
- Arrested Development to return in May, Netflix announces (metro.co.uk)
- Netflix’s ‘Arrested Development’ May Be Movie Precursor – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
Writing Is Hard Work 
thanks for the shout out
-Vito