Comedy Central announced today that they are in the development stages of a new series dubbed “Evil Genius.”
As one would expect, the series follows the story of a super genius whose nefarious world domination plot has succeeded – putting him at the head of a corporation which controls the entire planet.
The show asks the question “What next?” when Professor Tiberius Lynch rules the world. Of course, as a Comedy Central production, we can expect that humor will be the focus, and as it seems to take place in a corporation, we can be sure that most of the humor will parody daily office life, projecting the the trials and tribulations of corporate politics and cubicle adventures to a massive, globe altering scale.
Sci-fi isn’t really Comedy Central’s focus here, so how much of the cool geeky potential of a show about an evil genius will actually be taken advantage of is up for speculation. Will it be just an office comedy, or will it be a superhero / villain story with some office politics thrown in for laughs?
There is really a lot of potential for humor here for fans of comic books and superhero stories in general, as the heroes in typical stories are frequently trying to stop some evil guy from “taking over the world” in one capacity or another, but all of us have asked ourselves at least once, “so what would happen if he did take over the world, what would that really mean?”
There is a lot of potential in this idea for some high-minded, interesting looks at popular culture, media, society… The possibilities are nearly endless, so one hopes that it really is more than just “The Office” with a weird backdrop.
Unfortunately, Comedy Central shows do not usually get the deepest, most compelling writing, and it will more than likely just be dumb. It makes me wish that the show was being developed almost anywhere else. Imagine the same concept in the hands of HBO, for example.
