Photo : Frazer Harrison ( Getty Images )

Isn’t it nice when someone decides to make a TV exclusively for The A.V. Club? Because that’s apparently what Showtime is doing, with Deadline reporting that the premium cable network has given a pilot order to a project called The Curse starring Nathan Fielder and directed by Benny and Josh Safdie—a.k.a. the Safdie brothers, of Uncut Gems fame. The trio will also write the pilot, with Benny Safdie co-starring alongside Fielder. Deadline’s sources say the show will be about a newly married couple that hosts a “troubled HGTV show” called Flipanthropy. Also, the couple is apparently cursed, which seems reminiscent of one of the all-time-great segments on Fielder’s Nathan For You, in which he helped a woman boost her real-estate business by promoting her as someone who only sells ghost-free homes.


Fielder will be playing the husband and Safdie will be playing the producer of the show, which Deadline repeatedly refers to as an “HGTV show” (as opposed to, say, an “HGTV-like show”). That means The Curse will take place in a universe where Fielder is deemed likable and charismatic enough to host an actual TV show for normal people, and not a cool/smart TV show for cool/smart people like us, which is a universe we’d very much like to live in. Before we get too excited, though, The Curse is still just a pilot at this point, so it might not get any further than this stage.