Grab your thunder buddy, because Peacock just announced that it has given a straight-to-series order to a TV version of Ted, Seth MacFarlane’s surprisingly successful movie about a man (Mark Wahlberg) who lives with a big sentient teddy bear (MacFarlane) who likes to get high and have sex. It got a sequel a few years later that was also surprisingly successful, if only because nobody could’ve expected that “Mark Wahlberg and a teddy bear get high” would be funny enough to carry two movies.
And now it’s going to carry a TV show, albeit one without Mark Wahlberg, and maybe even without Seth MacFarlane. Peacock’s press release says he’s “in negotiations,” meaning there’s a chance this happens without him doing the voice, but that would seemingly negate the entire purpose of making a Ted show. The show will be live-action, but that’s pretty much all we know about it at this point. It’s a Seth MacFarlane show, so some kind irreverent sitcom parody seems like the most obvious route to take here, but there’s a lot more you could theoretically do with Ted as a character if MacFarlane doesn’t limit himself to winking at the tropes of another genre (that’s also what The Orville basically is, even if that show works better than, say, Family Guy).
The press release also doesn’t go into the behind-the-scenes crew much, so we don’t know if this will be an Orville or a Family Guy where MacFarlane is deeply involved, or an American Dad! where he just phones in a voice and lets other writers handle everything else. There’s also no premiere date listed, but the fact that it has a series order means it will (barring a very expensive decision to reverse course from Universal) at least be getting a full season at some point.