Most of the time the world can seem like one big dumpster heap, but not today, friends—no, not today. For today we celebrate the revival of A.P. Bio, which was picked up, dusted off, and cozily embraced by the powers-that-be at NBC. More specifically, per The Hollywood Reporter, the beloved series has found a new home on NBCUniversal’s streaming service, where it can frolic and play alongside soon-to-be new friends like The Office. It’s a very awesome turn of events following what appeared to be a failed social media campaign backed by series star Patton Oswalt, made all the more special by the fact that A.P. Bio will be the streaming platform’s first in-house original.
We made more than one case for the revival of A.P. Bio, which is executive produced by Lorne Michaels and Seth Meyers, and boasts SNL vet Mike O’Brien as showrunner—including why “Wednesday Morning, 8 AM” was the only argument needed to save the show from cancellation. But merciful and very good people at NBCUniversal heard our cries of “shame, shame, shame” and balance has been restored in the televised universe (okay, it probably had nothing to do with us, but let a pop culture website dream a little).
90 Comments
That’s the same as not having been revived at all.
But twice as many people will watch it.
I really don’t know. I watched it on Hulu. Now I won’t watch it at all.
I believe the joke was that double nothing is nothing.
I thought Seeso was done with.
Very nice! Can’t wait to pay for this streaming service and immediately unsubscribe after the season ends.
So the Game of Thrones model.
I’ve been using a stolen HBO password for years now
The CBS All Access model.
Your aging parents also have an account that you use?
I pay for it when Star Trek is on and cancel it the rest of the year.
So you pay for something that sucks and then stop when something good might be on?** Take that, Startrek Discovery!
I like Discovery.
HBO and Netflix are the only ones I see being worth it year-round. HBO content is consistently good and they always have something new coming out.
I used to do that, but I recently got a Very Personal Notification that makes that unnecessary.
Reckon one can probably watch the whole thing during the free preview, assuming there is a free preview, right?
But can they revive it without that main guy so it’s watchable?
So… why did you even bother opening this news item?
Because I liked a lot of the supporting cast?
My wife and I were rewatching Firefly and Serenity over the last week and Sunday night when we got to the part in Serenity where Glenn Howerton gets knocked off the skiff and eaten by Reavers (sorry if that’s a spoiler), I didn’t mind so much. I like AP Bio, but, like you, I wish they’d have either spent more time on the others and less on him or had him crank back the smarmy asshole by about 4 notches on the dial. Given the similarities between his character here and on It’s Always Sunny, I’m not sure that playing less of an asshole is in his wheelhouse. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the show, but thought it could have been improved by making it less Jack heavy, or by making him more likeable. Maybe the whole misanthrope antihero thing just isn’t for me. But Patton Oswalt, Paula Pell, the other teachers, and most of his students were just delightful.
Hah! That’s him?! As if I needed another reason to rewatch Serenity.
I was just surprised at how long it’d been since the last time I’d rewatched it (or the series).
I’m not sure that playing less of an asshole is in his wheelhouse.I can’t say if it is or isn’t but you can’t blame him for repeating himself. I’m sure NBC wanted a show where the guy from Always Sunny played a variation of the same character, not showing his acting chops playing something radically different. That’s kind of how it goes with comedic actors, most paying work is going to be based on doing the same schtick over and over.
It’s just Helen and Heather and their adorably odd adventures in and around the greater Toledo area holy crap don’t stop me I’m already writing the pilot
I don’t understand what this streaming service is, and I don’t care to find out. NBC owns Hulu, so why they need another streaming service is beyond me.This really feels like a turning point for me becoming an old man. This is the point where I throw my hands in the air and give up on keeping up with changing technology. There are too maby streaming options; I’ll just stick with Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime until they all fade away and my grandchildren buy me subscriptions to some services I’ve never heard of in the hopes that I will use them. I will not.
Disney owns Hulu.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulu#Disney_ownership
See? I’m so out of touch that I didn’t even realize that. NBCUniversal still owns a 33% share, it seems, and Disney is bringing out their streaming service too, so I still remain as confused as ever.
It’s okay. Drink your brain tonic and we’ll play a few hands of canasta.
It was originally jointly owned by ABC, NBC and FOX. Disney owned ABC, then bought FOX, giving them the 66% share, and NBCUniversal negotiated a buyout rather than remaining a minority (and thus powerless) partner.
Disney bought Hulu in order to have a place for its more adult offerings. I think that’s pretty much the whole of it.
Here here! I was telling the wife just the other morning, “Honey, there are too maby streaming options.”
She just sighed and put an extra scoop of rat poison in to my coffee.
I pay for Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, yet I probably spend more time watching Youtube and free streaming service Pluto TV than the other 3 combined. But each service has at least one or two shows that I am in the middle of, so they keep their hooks in me. And a bunch of those shows I watch with my wife, which means we only get a couple episodes in a week with our schedules. Once I move to a new place and have to pay for internet again, I am really going to have to do a cost/benefit analysis because internet is usually cheaper with cable, and I sure as hell am not paying for cable AND these streaming services.
Am I so out-of-touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.
Ah, fellow citizens, this IS great news!Now if I only knew what a “NBCUniversal Streaming Service” is.
What is this pic from? None of those kids are part of the cast.
Maybe it’s the pilot? That’s Victor in the lower left corner.
and the girl that was never noticed in class is there too!
In the back is the girl who they did that whole bit where he thought she was a new student but she’d been there the whole time, isn’t it? I don’t really know, I’m somewhere on the spectrum and am sort of faceblind, so maybe I should just shut up now.
I’m not even going to say this show is good but I surely do look forward to every episode.
Crickets around the world joined in unison.
kill yourself
Go choke yourself, fuckstain.
kill yourself
It’s sad that you keep sending blurred images when your comments are pending approval. I’m not clicking on whatever garbage you’ve posted, you huge dumbass.Kill yourself.
Why don’t you go kill yourself? or maybe just the pathetic slimy cunt that queefed you into existence.
It’s sad that all you can type is ‘kill yourself’. But tell you what, I will keep posting WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANT. I don’t care if you look at it or not. As long as you keep up with the kill yourself comments, I will keep replying to you. I wish that I could kick your mother in the cunt and punch that fat pig in the face for having not aborted a piece of shit like you. I hope that your children, should you have any, die from cancer of the genitalia. I pray that you and your loved ones are in a horrible fiery crash and they put out the fires on your face with an ice pick. Hopefully someone at least shoves a broom handle wrapped with barbed wire up your asshole. Go look up what they did to the U.S. ambassabor to Libya when they overan the embassy during the Benghazi incident.. I hope that shit happens to you and yours.
kill yourself
Not before you choke to death on tranny dick
kill yourself
I like to imagine someone stomping on your mother’s head until it is just a puddle of gray and red slime. But since I don’t know what she looks like I guess you have to live with that image. Think of a truck running down your children. Better yet live in the reality of Trump being President another 4 years. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
kill yourself
No. I’d rather tell you how fucking disgusting of a fat pig you are. Instead why don’t you go put the barrel of a pistol in your mouth and paint the bathroom wall with your gray matter?
kill yourself
I hate when I streaming service picks up a canceled show and then calls it “an original.” Arrested Development is not a Netflix original series.
Nor are any of the BBC/ITV shows it picks up. Just because it hasn’t been broadcast in the US before, doesn’t mean you get to call it your original property.
Was it originally that terrible? Point, Netflix!
It kinda sounds like they “cancelled” it in the first place so that they could pretend to be cool and bring it back (but now you have to pay for it).
They should have done this before the actors’ contracts expired then. Gotta re-sign them all now.
Yeah, but now they can resign them for less money because it’s online only. They would have had to pay them full rate before.
To accommodate the downgrade in budget, there will be a smaller episode order, and they’ll lose a few consulting producers.
This sounds right, they probably saw that a vast majority if the show’s viewers were coming in from Hulu, probably why we never got any news about Hulu making an attempt to save it.
Contract wise, that sounds like a complicated publicity stunt to pull off successfully. Easier said than done?
Am i remembering correctly that this service is going to be free as long as you are paying for cable?
HAHAHAHAHA, good one.
I hope this is true. I’ve been using my parents cable log in for like ten years now.
It appears that plans are for it to be free, but ad supported:
https://screenrant.com/nbcuniversal-streaming-service-2020-free/
Sooo… like a normal TV network, just in streaming form. Ok. That’ll be an interesting experiment that may fail miserably. Granted, I currently watch AP Bio with ads, so I’ll probably continue that trend if this is the case, so maybe not a bad idea at all. It gives people options when they don’t want to pony up more monthly fees.
Most of my VOD channels keep the ads and don’t let you skip them, so I think this will feel just like that, but going through NBC’s website versus Comcast or DirecTV. If the content is good, I don’t mind ads, as long as they don’t overdo it. Hell, I would easily watch the Star Trek content on CBS all access if it was ad supported, but I’m not giving them money just to watch one show.
Torrents be making a come back with all these streaming sites. Or so my poor neighbor tells me.
This is good news, but I still wish The Mick had been resurrected instead.Hey NBC, if you guys need to lower the budget to make this work, here’s a suggestion: get rid of the other teacher characters. I find all 3 ladies amusing to varying degrees, but the kids are the real star of the show. Any time there is a subplot with those teachers that does not involve the main character or his students, I just wonder why it is even in the show. Maybe it was so the show could maintain a core cast if it ran long enough for the kids to get replaced, but obviously that was putting the cart before the horse. Keep Glenn, Patton, and Paula, and don’t you dare lose any of those kids because they are all gold.
The kids on the show are amazing, every one of them.“It must have been love, but it’s over now…”
100% agree (sorry to the actresses that play the three teachers) – the show definitely drags anytime there is a teacher subplot.
Keep Glenn, Patton, and Paula, and don’t you dare lose any of those kids because they are all gold.Yeah, definitely keep Paula Pell. I get that she’s a great writer, bu how did she go so long without being recognized as a performer.
AP Bio has been uncancelled!But it’s going to NBC’s streaming service
Welcome to the new streaming era. It’s only going to get worse, unfortunately.
Bummer! This show isn’t very good, squanders it’s amazing cast and keeps Glenn Howerton away from Sunny, which is a much better show. The whole “cynical teacher with a heart of gold meets a bunch of kids who get him to embrace his inner goodness” thing is tired and cliched and has been done better a million times before. It’s a goddamn shame this crap got revived and The Mick is still cancelled. While the premise was somewhat similar The Mick did it way better and deserved additional seasons. AP Bio does not.
Unlike you I enjoy AP Bio, but I definitely agree that The Mick did the similar tired premise better. And The Mick had some real balls for a network show, too, I was frequently surprised at what they got away with. Even as Mickey herself became a more caring person and (slightly) more responsible caregiver, the show always maintained its edge. You never knew when someone was going to get severely maimed or mentally scarred. Jimmy getting the shit beaten out of him by an entire girls high school soccer team was the hardest I laughed last year. Just brutal.
when it was canceled, i posted here that i hoped it would be picked up somewhere & was poo-pooed. who’s poo-pooing now, motherfuckers?! also, yay! i really liked this show, especially paula pell & patton oswalt.
Everyone who is unwilling to pay for NBCUniversal Streaming (or even willing to acknowledge that it will one day exist) is still poo pooing, thank you very much.
Ten years from now, we’ll all be subscribed to a dozen streaming services, and we’ll miss the good old days of cable TV. At least my beloved Andy Griffith reruns are still on Netflix.
So what you’re saying is that it might as well be still cancelled because there’s no way in hell I’m paying for another streaming service.
A.P. Bio
Hurray!…Oh.
I was looking forward to his normal involvement in Sunny.
Hooray! Except I’m poor and don’t want to pay for another streaming service, so… boo-ray?
If they can just toss in a couple of Timeless two-hour specials I might subscribe.In the meantime, I imagine they’ll use it as a venue to burn off all those episodes of Ironside and The Paul Reiser Show that never aired.
I don’t think people realize just how gross this is. Look up the info about the new streaming service. It’s free if you pay for cable, but if you don’t pay for TV through a company like Comcast or Dish, it’s going to be $12 a month. And that’s not guaranteed ad-free.
Also, I feel like NBCUniversal intentionally waited for contracts to expire before renewing the show in order to negotiate paying less to everyone on the basis that the show is an experiment for the network. And for two months, they weaponized a small fandom, and just long enough to possibly get some potential subscribers, because I feel like the show’s demographic is the same demographic that doesn’t buy cable.
Thank God!!! Love this show.Bring back Timeless the same way!