Arrested Development Returns for a Fourth Season

It looks like one of the funniest shows in the history of television is coming back, though not to a major broadcast network. On Saturday Netflix announced that it has won the exclusive rights to stream the fourth season of Arrested Development online.

The cast of Arrested Development reunited in October at the New Yorker Festival where creator Michael Hurwitz announced that he planned to do a truncated fourth season that would lead into the Arrested Development movie that is also in the works. The fourth season is planned to have 9-10 episodes, with each episode focusing on a single character. Although Fox still holds certain rights to the series, Showtime, Hulu, and Netflix had all expressed interest in the show. After an apparent bidding war between the latter two, it has been announced that Netflix has won the rights to the fourth season, which it will begin broadcasting on its site in early 2013.

It is not clear however if Hurwitz et al still intends to do the abbreviated, character-focused season they discussed in New York last month. It is also still unclear how many and which members of the original cast are on board for the new season, but it is believed that Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Portia de Rossi, Tony Hale, David Cross, Jessica Walter, Jeffrey Tambor and Alia Shawkat are all interested, along with executive producer and narrator Ron Howard. No word about Liza Minelli yet however...

Although the brilliant show was tragically and prematurely cancelled back in 2006 after just three seasons, fans of the series have remained devoted and vocal. Indeed Ron Howard stated in a recent tweet that fan support contributed significantly to the revival of the show saying; "Many thanks to you ever-so-vocal Arrested Development supporters. Wouldn't have gotten here without you."

For anyone unfamiliar with the genius that is Arrested Development, the series is everything one could hope for in television: it is hilarious, intelligent, well-written, multi-dimensional, and flawlessly cast. The show's "storyline centers on the Bluth family, a formerly wealthy," severely disfunctional family and is "presented in a continuous format, incorporating hand-held camera work, narration, archival photos, and historical footage." Imagine Modern Family, except with all of the characters about 100 times more interesting, funny, and dysfunctional, and with mind-boggling attention to detail and a running socio-cultural/political commentary going on and you're just beginning to approach Arrested Develpment. 2013 can't come soon enough.