With a little help from longtime collaborator Louis C.K., Pamela Adlon is gearing up for her first starring vehicle after decades of acclaimed supporting turns and voiceover work. The project is Better Things, a new FX comedy series based partly on Adlon’s life as a working actress struggling to balance a career, parenting, and a social life. The network has scheduled the show to premiere on Sept. 8.
Adlon and C.K. have a long-standing creative relationship dating back to the maligned HBO multicamera comedy Lucky Louie, in which the two played bickering spouses. More recently, Adlon was the only credited writer on the first four seasons of FX’s Louie other than C.K. himself, and she received four Emmy nominations for her work on the show as a producer, writer, and actress. Better Things reunites the pair as co-creators for the first time, with C.K. directing the pilot.
The series marks C.K.’s return to FX and his third project overall for the network, after Louie and Zach Galifianakis’ Baskets (which he also co-created). But Better Things also carries a more surprising, if less reported, distinction: It’s the first FX comedy ever to feature a woman as the sole lead. Given that the network has picked up shows centered on dogs, clowns, and Charlie Sheen over the past few years, you might say that this was a little overdue.
