Family Drama From Alan Ball Goes Straight to Series at HBO

HBO is going back to its golden child, Alan Ball, for a new family drama.

The premium cable network has gone straight to series on an untitled multi-racial family drama from the Six Feet Under and True Blood creator, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. It’s the first project to come from Ball’s new two-year overall deal with HBO.

Here’s the official logline: “This untitled series focuses on a contemporary multi-racial family: a philosophy professor, his lawyer wife, their three adopted children from Somalia, Vietnam and Colombia, and their sole biological child. This seemingly perfect, progressive family is in actuality harboring deep rifts. Then, one of the children begins to see things others cannot. Is it mental illness? Or something else? The series is a tragicomic meditation on the complicated forces at work on us all in America today.”

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Ball created the drama and will executive produce alongside his Your Face Goes Here banner topper Peter Macdissi. The project marks the fifth collaboration for Ball with HBO and its sibling cabler, Cinemax, following Six Feet Under, True Blood and Banshee. He next exec produces Oprah Winfrey TV movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, due in 2017 from HBO Films. 

The series, which was set to be announced Saturday during HBO’s time at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, marks the latest pickup for the cabler under new programming president Casey Bloys. It joins Bill Hader comedy Barry and a roster of dramas that also includes Westworld, The Deuce and Sharp Objects, among others. Sharp Objects is due in 2018 and Big Little Lies will air in 2017.

As for Ball’s other current HBO drama pilot — Virtuoso, a period musical entry that counts Elton John among its exec producers — the status of that project remains unclear.