US sitcom heading to UK

Comedy Central has brought the rights to new American sitcom Whitney, starring stand-up Whitney Cummings.

The series, a traditional multi-camera sitcom filmed with a live audience, revolves around a couple in a long-term relationship, trying to keep the romance alive.

It launched on a prime-time slot on NBC two weeks ago, where it attracted a good audience of 6.7million viewers. However critics were less impressed. The San Francisco Gate said it was ‘perfectly adequate, but only that’ – and Metacritic.com, which aggregates reviews, said it averaged 50 per cent on its scale.

Cummings got her start on MTV’s Punk’d, and last year she recorded her own stand-up special. As well as this series, she co-created the CBS sitcom Two Broke Girls, which launched in the States just three days before Whitney debuted.

Whitney will join Comedy Central in spring 2012, alongside its other US hits such as Two and a Half Men and Friends.

The channel’s managing director Jill Offman said: ‘Whitney has a hilariously skewed view of modern relationships that’s not too far from the truth.’

Published: 3 Oct 2011