Blurgh! Y-Bum Pilot Gets NBC Green Light

NBC has given the go-ahead for production of a comedy television show pilot episode with the working title of Y-Bum, entertainment industry sources revealed.

“Hogan’s Heroes meets Gorillas in the Mist meets Hannibal Lechter,” is how one insider describes the concept. “Oh, and a little bit of Wall Street, the movie.”

The show is said to “layer a goofy, quirky veneer over an edgy, dark comic foundation”. The fictional protagonist, Yaniv Blumenfeld or Y-bum, is a bumbling egocentric who runs a congenitally troubled Manhattan-based investment firm, Glacier Global Partners. The socially and financially inept Y-Bum gets money for his doomed investments from demented elderly family members and dull corrupt bankers. Unpaid interns and part-time students dominate the Glacier staff, which works out of The Playgirl Building, often interacting with drop-ins from Playgirl Magazine when not playing 1970s-vintage video games.

Y-Bum is a clinical narcissistic sociopath, which drives the dark comic thread. Psychiatrists and primate researchers are among consultants NBC has lined up for the show.

Saturday Night Live’s Bobby Moynihan leads the list of actors with a shot at the name part. But improving CGI economics and the appropriately creepy affect of computer-generated human characters have producers looking at making Y-Bum the first fully-CGI lead character in a network TV sitcom. That and compassion for an actor who quite possibly could wind up being typecast as a very sick Wall Street fuck for the rest of his career.

NBC is trying to keep a lid on the project, fearing the early buzz could spawn a host of competing “bailout snarfing malignant Wall Street fudgedrawers idiot psycho put a face on the global meltdown” knock-off comedy shows.

“You don’t need comedy writers for this kind of show,” we were told. “You can cut and paste whole scripts from 10-K financial reports, court records and transcripts of Manhattan psychiatrists’ office surveillance tapes.”

Early focus group response has been off the charts, according to a reliable source. “Women like seeing a bad boss get his comeuppance a la 9-to-5. But he’s a monster who could erupt suddenly and literally eat your face off in two bites, which pulls in the young male audience. Older viewers, who’ve had their mutual funds and 401-Ks robbed and who resent paying for the bailout, want to get their yucks too, figuring it’s their only compensation.”

We were told: “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss $787 billion goodbye.”