Johnny Galecki New Comedy AOK in Development at CBS, Will Serve as EP

Have you ever wondered what Halt and Catch Fire would look like as a multi-camera comedy? If so, you may be in luck.

CBS has put into development AOK, a ’90s-set workplace sitcom from executive producers Johnny Galecki (The Big Bang Theory) and John Quaintance (Will & Grace), Deadline reports.

The potential series, which is being penned by Quaintance, revolves around “a group of young and mostly idealistic entrepreneurs” at an “underdog Internet company in pre-America Online 1991… who work together, hang out together, and fall in and out of love with each other, all while trying to change their world, and holding up a mirror to ours.”

As for the Halt and Catch Fire comparison, the critically acclaimed AMC series ran for four seasons, between 2014 and 2017. Spanning a full decade, beginning in 1984 and ending in 1994, the drama followed four idealistic tech entrepreneurs (played by Lee Pace, Scoot McNairy, Kerry Bishé and Mackenzie Davis) who, um… worked together, hung out together, and fell in and out of love. Its fourth and final season focused not on a fictitious AOL competitor, but a failed Yahoo! competitor named Comet, which ultimately went under once Yahoo! was chosen as Netscape Navigator’s default web directory.

AOK brings Galecki back into the CBS fold, following his 12-season run as Dr. Leonard Hofstadter on the aforementioned Big Bang Theory. He was also on executive producer on the short-lived Jay R. Ferguson comedy Living Biblically, which aired on CBS in 2018.

Since Big Bang, Galecki has kept a relatively low profile, appearing only in two episodes of The Conners in 2019. In the case of AOK, he is attached only as an EP.

Should AOK receive a series order, it would presumably join Big Bang prequel Young Sheldon as part of the Eye network’s Thursday night comedy block.