Nathan Fielder, host and creator of the brilliant Nathan for You from Comedy Central, is currently working on a new comedy series for Showtime with the Safdie Brothers, directors of Uncut Gems. But that’s not stopping the comedian from setting up another comedy series at a competing cable network.

HBO has ordered a half-hour comedy series called The Rehearsal, and Nathan Fielder will be writing, directing, executive producing and starring in the series. It comes as part of Fielder’s overall deal that he struck at HBO back in 2019.

Deadline has news on Nathan Fielder’s new show, The Rehearsal, which is said to be “set in a world where nothing seems to ever work out as you had hoped.” In the series, Fielder will give people the opportunity to rehearse for their own lives. What’s not clear at this time is whether this will be a scripted series or something with a reality TV/documentary angle in the same style as Nathan for You. My gut tells me it will be the latter, but with Fielder, anything is possible, especially since they felt the need to say the series is “set in a world,” which you don’t normally have to specify when talking about reality/documentary projects.

If you never caught an episode of Nathan for You, the series found the comedian acting as a consultant to assist small businesses owners in making certain changes or innovations to help improve the business. However, the ideas themselves were often off-the-wall and extremely questionable in their effectiveness. The comedy came from watching real people deal with the awkward situations that Nathan Fielder put them in, whether it was because of his character’s odd nature or because of the weird ideas he suggested they try out. Here’s one of the more famous segments from the show:

You may have inadvertently heard of one of Nathan Fielder’s segments from the show because they went viral online, such as the Dumb Starbucks gag or the video where a pig rescued a baby goat from drowning, which was a totally staged video meant to generate buzz for a zoo. That’s just the tip of the iceberg that is the brilliance of Nathan for You.

Considering the kind of comedic originality that Fielder brought to the table in Nathan for You, especially when it came to creating those viral moments across the internet before anyone knew what the comedian was doing, The Rehearsal should be something worth looking forward to. Hopefully we’ll have more details soon so we can know what to expect. Then again, maybe it would be better knowing as little as possible.

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