In Development – Family Happiness

6 x 30 min TV Series

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Family Happiness is very much a dramatic two hander between two powerful women at different life stages – Alex and Maggie – both striving to create a better world for the next generation, ironically both leaving their own children motherless and angry in different ways. Resonant with feminist and motherhood and female friendship themes, and complete with an unexpected ending, the stakes remain deeply personal.

At its core an elevated family drama, Family Happiness is a rich emotional soup with dark humour and deep pathos. The humour comes from the flawed, eccentric, and deeply complex characters, like in Jill Soloway’s Transparent or I Love Dick. Marry this delicious messy heart drama with the emotional sturm & drang of Danish relationship dramas like After the Wedding.

Set in a visually unique and cinematically stunning
luxe eco-tech world to a restless time signature structure seen in shows like This Is Us and Station Eleven unspooling between two emotional timelines and happily following a new character for half an episode if that is what the storytelling commands. The dual timelines build inherent intrigue and yearning as we try to make connections between the characters, their changed relationships over time, significant absences,

and whether characters lost to each other will find each other again.

Through each episode we experience striking and singular interstitial pieces which track the mood of the story and the fortunes and favour of the characters we will know and love. These pieces are created by Alex’s daughter Phoenix, a wayward teen who uses the environment around her to create art. This art is based on the real life work of Rosemary Laing. This is framed by the staging of a provocative art performance and creations of Tolstoy’s Family Happiness to play out themes of the series as a dramatic counterweight to realistic scenes.

Team

Created by Jasmin Tarasin and Nicole Dade

Writers Nicole Dade , John Collee , Anya Beyersdorf

Producers Linda Micsko and Karen Radzyner

Production Company Photoplay www.photoplay.co