The Australian TV dramedy “Please Like Me” earned a devoted following and an international Emmy nomination for the way it used droll humor to explore difficult, even tragic, events. Its creator and star, the comedian Josh Thomas, drew from his own life to shape the four-season show, including his experiences coming out as gay and dealing with his mother’s attempted suicide.

Thomas, 32, is now back with a new show, “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay,” which he also wrote and stars in. (The show will premiere on Jan. 16 on Freeform, and episodes will be on Hulu from Jan. 17.)

Thomas plays Nicholas, a narcissistic, neurotic 25-year-old who becomes the legal guardian of his two half sisters in Los Angeles, one of whom has high-functioning autism, when their father dies of cancer. The show’s ten episodes are an unsparing and often absurdly funny look at the dynamics of sibling life, stripped down to their bare essentials.

In a phone interview from Los Angeles, Thomas said that killing off the parents at the beginning of a coming-of-age TV show “is tradition”: “I just wanted to create that world where there were three people living in the house trying to survive.” He also discussed working with A.D.H.D., how American TV sets differ from on Australian ones and why he now wouldn’t cast a straight man in a gay role.