According to Deadline, Freeform has ordered another series from Grown-ish writer Kenya Barris—a multi-camera comedy show called Besties, which was co-created with Born Again Virgin’s Ranada Shepard.
Besties will revolve around two best friends as they trek through life and confront issues of race, identify, friendship, and class, all while attempting to figure out who they are and what they want in this world. Sure, it sounds about as simple and familiar as it gets, but Barris has been a welcome voice in terms of approachable content that conveys race and class issues to audiences who’d otherwise never give them a shot. If we’re going by the man’s résumé, it certainly seems Besties will do pretty well.
Barris has been on fire lately, as ABC recently picked up his Emmy-nominated series Black-ishfor a fifth season, and the Tiffany Haddish comedy he wrote, Girls Trip, made over $100 million at the box office—making it the only film written, produced, directed and starring black people to do so. The man is a showrunner, writer, director and producer extraordinaire, with a track record other Hollywood moguls would kill for.
As for Besties, Barris and Shepard will executive produce through ABC Signature Studios, which is the streaming division of ABC that Barris is currently contractually signed to. As coincidence would have it—or fate, depending on your worldview—Freeform’s order of Besties comes one year to the day that it decided to pick up Grown-ish, the popular Black-ish spin-off. As far as spin-offs go, Grown-is has been pretty successful, too, as it's become the number one cable comedy season in Freeform’s demographic of women aged 18 to 34.
In case you have comedy sitcom or friendship drama fatigue, Besties might be one to reconsider. Of course, we’ll have to wait for a trailer or the actual pilot episode to accurately gauge how this thing looks, but the pedigree here is off to a great start. Personally, anyone who writes a comedy that makes me laugh at least three times—and Girls Trip definitely did—has a returning customer in me.
