Seth MacFarlane is bringing everyone’s favorite trash-talking teddy bear to the small screen. Today, he said the Ted TV series will debut on Peacock on January 11 and offered fans a sneak peek.
The limited, seven-episode long show is set in 1993. Ted, voiced by MacFarlane, is back home in Framingham, Massachusetts, with his best friend, 16-year-old John Bennett, played by Max Burkholder. It serves as a prequel to the Ted movies and is based on the “timeless truth that being sixteen sucks.”
“The only thing that makes it tolerable is going through it with a friend, even if that friend is a has-been magical teddy bear with a foul mouth and a proclivity for drug use,” said the show’s creators.
Scott Grimes and Alanna Ubach play John’s parents, Matty and Susan, and Giorgia Whigham is cast as his cousin Blaire.
This is far from the first show to jump from the big screen to a series. Westworld was a widely popular series on Max based on the 1973 film of the same name written and directed by Michael Crichton. The same rings true for Fargo, which was inspired by the Coen brothers’ 1996 film, Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys from 1995, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho inspired the series Bate Motel on A&E.
MacFarlane serves as executive producer, writer, director, and co-showrunner, along with Paul Corrigan and Brad Walsh. He released a note along with a teaser trailer and first looks at the series.
“Each generation develops its own unique artistic style, its own way of seeing the world. In the twenties, it was the subversive musical phrasings of jazz. In the fifties, it was the bold brushwork of the abstract expressionists. Our generation’s unique art is streaming content based on previously successful intellectual property. In that proud tradition, we humbly give you Ted.”
Check out the official teaser trailer for the Peacock original series Ted here. The series will have a “supersized” premiere followed by six 30-minute episodes.