#‘D.A.R.Y.L.’ Sequel TV Series Starring Tony Hale in the Works For Some Inexplicable Reason

Remember D.A.R.Y.L.? I sure don’t, but it was a movie from 1985 about a young boy who was secretly a robot. And now, for reasons that are far beyond my understanding, there’s a TV series sequel in the works. It’s one of several titles in development over at TNT and TBS, and Tony Hale is set to star as the robot boy, who is now all grown-up…and obsolete.

In 1985, the world met D.A.R.Y.L., a robot who looked just like a real boy (his name stands for Data-Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform). I grew up in the ’80s, and I have absolutely no memory of this movie. But other people do, and that’s why (I guess?) Paramount is developing a TV sequel series for TBS. That may sound like a silly idea, and it sounds like that’s exactly the point. The official logline for the show makes it sound like the folks involved are going for something very meta here, and fully acknowledging how absurd this all is:

A half-hour comedy that picks up where Paramount’s 1985 feature left off. What if a top-secret, 10-year-old human weapon grew up to be a 44-year-old guy just trying to keep up with a world that he was never designed for? And what if the story morphed from an ’80s sci-fi adventure movie about a child with a computer in his skull … into a single-camera comedy starring Tony Hale? The boy everyone wanted … has become the man no one needs … in the TV adaptation nobody asked for.

Having not seen the original D.A.R.Y.L., I don’t have a whole lot to add. I will say that I like that the writers are clearly having fun with this concept. D.A.R.Y.L. may have been a high-tech robo-boy back in the ’80s, but now that he’s an adult, played by Tony Hale, he’s obsolete. There’s a lot of room for potential there. And Tony Hale sounds like the perfect comedic actor for this role.

Along with D.A.R.Y.L., The Wrap has a list of three other projects being developed for TBS and TNT:

TNT

The Fall


Logline: A captivating paranoid thriller about a woman whose dark secrets start to unravel her seemingly perfect life. Inspired by the Albert Camus tale of the same name.


Writers: Jeremy Miller, Daniel Cohn (Entourage)


Studio: A E Studios


Director: Philip Noyce (The Bone Collector)


Nonwriting producer: Ross Fineman

Liar’s Club


Logline: Part comedy, part pulp thriller, Liar’s Club tells the story of a woman leading two very different lives — one adorned in the trappings of Connecticut country clubs, and the other drenched in the murkiness of the underground gambling circuit in NYC. It’s Marvelous Mrs. Maisel meets Breaking Bad.


Studio: CBS Television Studios


Co-EP/writer: Amy Rutberg


EP: Christopher Silber (Elementary)


Nonwriting producers: Paul Giamatti, Dan Carey

TBS

Space


Logline: On the verge of a break-up, long-term couple Rob and Marin are granted the ultimate “space” to figure out their future when they suddenly begin jumping into the bodies of other couples. It’s a hilarious, romantic, oddly relatable Quantum Leap.


Studio: Sony Pictures Television


Writer: Hilary Winston (Community)


Nonwriting producers: Stoller Global Solutions


Director: Nick Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall)

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