{"id":575810,"date":"2026-04-01T19:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T19:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/575810\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T19:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T19:49:10","slug":"we-got-cancelled-and-were-still-here-michael-patrick-king-on-the-comeback-and-why-and-just-like-that-will-age-well-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/575810\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We got cancelled and we\u2019re still here!\u2019 Michael Patrick King on The Comeback \u2013 and why And Just Like That will age well | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

TV veteran Michael Patrick King has had a long, lively career, writing, directing and producing on shows including Murphy Brown, Will & Grace and 2 Broke Girls. He\u2019s best known, though, for his work on the Sex and the City franchise, serving as its showrunner for the bulk of its run, writing and directing its two films, and masterminding its controversial 2020s revival And Just Like That<\/a>. But this month sees the return of one of his most loved, and perhaps most underwatched, shows: The Comeback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Co-created and co-written with Lisa Kudrow<\/a>, The Comeback first aired in 2005, telling the story of a gormless sitcom star named Valerie Cherish, played by Kudrow, trying to return to stardom through the then-new format of reality TV. The show had an awkward, blackly hilarious tone that was a hit with critics and the Emmys, but failed to find much of an audience. Nine years later, in 2014, it returned for a masterly second season in which Valerie \u2013 now playing herself in a gritty HBO dramatisation of the events of season one, and filming the whole thing as an audition tape for The Real Housewives \u2013 confronts her failing marriage and relationships.<\/p>\n

double quotation markValerie says to her husband in this season: \u2018You told a joke at a time when jokes were illegal’<\/p>\n

Diehard fans have been clamouring for a third season ever since. And although King says \u201cwe never expected to come back\u201d, here he is, promoting The Comeback\u2019s triumphant, and steadfastly final, new season. \u201cLisa and I would get together all the time and have lunch,\u201d he says, \u201cand towards the end, the conversation would drift to, \u2018What do you think Valerie\u2019s doing?\u2019 There was an open door, but everything was unspoken, because we were all very happy after season two.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Fans don\u2019t want their characters to change\u2019 \u2026 Michael Patrick King. Photograph: Robby Klein\/Getty Images for IMDb<\/p>\n

But Hollywood, which has been experiencing some of its most tumultuous years in memory thanks to the rise of streaming and social media, plus a spate of strikes, was begging for Valerie\u2019s return. At one of King and Kudrow\u2019s lunches after the WGA and Sag-Aftra strikes of 2023<\/a>, Kudrow mused that it would be funny to see Valerie, rarely a good person to have around in a crisis, deal with her industry in distress. King immediately saw an opportunity: the Writers\u2019 Guild had forewarned that its next big negotiation, in 2026, would be about AI. \u201cThe only reason to come back,\u201d he says, \u201cwas because it felt like a perfect Valerie storm. We thought it was worth the risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Season three of The Comeback begins in the middle of the strike. Valerie is \u2013 of course \u2013 haranguing strike negotiator Fran Drescher, playing herself, for a photo. But the bulk of the season takes place in 2026, when Valerie has been cast as the lead in a new sitcom called How\u2019s That? The studio making the show has given Valerie executive producer status, with a caveat: How\u2019s That? is written by AI, and she\u2019s not allowed to tell the cast or crew.<\/p>\n

Valerie is still being followed around by a film crew \u2013 Laura Silverman returns as put-upon documentarian Jane \u2013 as well as a social media assistant, played with droll hilarity by Ben Stiller\u2019s daughter Ella. Of course, that doesn\u2019t feel so novel any more. \u201cEverything that was considered desperate and ruthless in season one is now commonplace,\u201d says King. \u201cWe know what people will do for attention, or to create a brand. Sacrifice husbands, bring their children on camera.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strong implication of this season \u2013 and its finale end-credits tag reading \u201cNo AI was used in the making of this show\u201d \u2013 is that AI is already rampant in Hollywood. King says he hasn\u2019t heard about any shows using AI, but that their discussion of AI in the show is informed by research he and Kudrow conducted. \u201cThe idea of keeping the AI a secret came from experts we met,\u201d he says. \u201cThey told us that the one place the public pushes back on AI is in art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before she was an actor, Kudrow was a scientist \u2013 a biologist, actually. \u201cSo,\u201d says King, \u201cwe didn\u2019t want to make stuff up that would look foolish if it was put on TV.\u201d He still remembers one bone-chilling meeting with a researcher whose AI model predicted what season three would be about.<\/p>\n

\u2018It told 55-year-old women not to wear tulle\u2019 \u2026 from left: Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristin Davis in And Just Like That. Photograph: Album\/Alamy<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounded kind of like Jodie Foster,\u201d he recalls. \u201cIt had a very smart, warm voice.\u201d The model began talking about how it liked some of King\u2019s past work, at which point he demanded it be turned off. \u201cAccording to our research, AI is much further along than ChatGPT,\u201d he says. \u201cThey say GPT is like a toddler compared to where they are. Everything in the show is very possible \u2013 nothing is fantastical.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s curious is that, given the extent of their AI research, they decided to place Valerie back in a multi-camera sitcom. This is largely seen as a dead format, although King calls sitcoms \u201cValerie\u2019s holy grail\u201d. He loves the format, having started his career there. His show 2 Broke Girls, which ended in 2017, is one of the last examples of a major long-running multi-cam sitcom. It was derided for its retrograde jokes about race, gender and sexuality. How does he feel about that now?<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Valerie says to her husband in this season, \u2018You told a joke at a time when jokes were illegal.\u2019 There were a lot of illegal jokes in 2 Broke Girls. It was designed to be situation comedy meets burlesque. I call it high-low. I don\u2019t know if AI would have written a lot of those jokes \u2013 they were too sharp, and potentially dangerous. Everything is somebody\u2019s opinion. That\u2019s the trickiest thing about television \u2013 somebody\u2019s opinion!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitcom meets burlesque \u2026 Kat Dennings, left, and Beth Behrs in 2 Broke Girls. Photograph: CBS<\/p>\n

Speaking of viewer feedback, that brings us to And Just Like That, one of the most widely debated shows<\/a> HBO has ever aired. King still holds the belief that viewers will eventually come to understand the series, which ended its three-season run last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf The Comeback has taught me anything,\u201d he says, \u201cit\u2019s that perceptions can change over the years. The Comeback\u2019s first perception was: it failed. Then it grew in relevance as the world caught up. I think And Just Like That will potentially age well. It has the same DNA as the original Sex and the City<\/a>, which was society telling 35-year-old women they should be married. In And Just Like That, society was telling 55-year-old women they shouldn\u2019t be wearing tulle. I\u2019ve always tried to be excited about writing the individual v society.\u201d<\/p>\n

The risk of having fans dislike a character as they get older, he says, is worth it if it opens up the potential for great television. \u201cI\u2019m interested in how characters change,\u201d he says. \u201cThe surprise for me was discovering that fans don\u2019t want their characters to change \u2013 they want to see them frozen in the time they fell in love with them. That\u2019s a particular dilemma if you\u2019re trying to move things forward. If there was a great disaster, it would have been if And Just Like That tried to be Sex and the City. It\u2019s much better to come back, break it, and be a new show, even though you\u2019re going to get hit with, \u2018We like the other show better.\u2019 Well, OK \u2013 it\u2019s still there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will the third season of The Comeback finally garner the sort of audience figures that Sex and the City luxuriated in, as Valerie is seen to have changed and grown? \u201cWe got cancelled and we\u2019re here 21 years later,\u201d says King, before dipping into an impression of Valerie: \u201cIt\u2019ll come around!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Comeback is on HBO Max<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TV veteran Michael Patrick King has had a long, lively career, writing, directing and producing on shows including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-575810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}