Amazon Adds Jay Chandrasekhar’s ‘Really’ To Its Third Pilot Season

Amazon Video has used crowdsourced “pilot competitions” to determine which original series it should give a green light.  With four series from the platform’s most recent competition in production, Amazon has turned to round three. It has just added a dramedy called Really to its new pilot season.

Really is written, created, and directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, whose Broken Lizard comedy troupe has brought us cult comedies like Super Troopers and Beerfest. The series will take to suburbia, where it will focus on a couple played by Chandrasekhar and Sarah Chalke who must navigate the emotional trials of marriage and growing up. From that description, Really sounds a lot like Transparent, one of the four series that received the green light from Amazon’s previous pilot season.

“Really is meant to be a sophisticated, funny, strikingly honest cable comedy for adults,” said Chandrasekhar. “We’re going to talk honestly about subjects including sex, alcohol, addiction, drugs, race and politics. Good fun.”

Really joins two other previously-announced shows that will compete in Amazon’s third pilot season. A comedy called The Cosmopolitans will star Adam Brody and Chloe Sevigny, and Ron Perlman will lead a drama called Hand of God.

Amazon likes these pilot competitions because they serve as a large-scale focus groups that allows the platform to make safer bets on its original series. The first two series born from this method, Alpha House and Betas, only drew mediocre reviews, but some of the green-lit pilots in the second round showed much more promise. Those four series have yet to receive release dates.