Hurwitz was chosen by Ron Howard to create a sitcom about a rich dysfunctional family, which eventually turned into Arrested Development. Hurwitz wrote the pilot in 2002, which was filmed in March 2003. Fox added the show to its schedule in May. Despite laudatory reviews by television critics, Arrested Development received low ratings throughout its three-season run. In July 2004, the show was nominated for 7 Primetime Emmy Awards and won 5, including Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series.
In the second season, ratings decreased further and the show was cut down to 18 episodes instead of the planned 22 episodes. Nevertheless, the show was still critically acclaimed and was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards. In the show's third and final season on Fox, Hurwitz tried to keep Arrested Development on the air, but did not have the advertising funding to promote the series. The show was again cut down, from 18 episodes to 13. Fox announced the cancellation of the show before the production of the final five episodes.
After seven years off the air, Arrested Development returned for a fifteen-episode fourth season on the online movie and television streaming service Netflix on May 26, 2013. After yet another multi-year hiatus in which there was uncertainty of future seasons being developed, Netflix and the show's producers announced the development of a fifth season. The release was heralded by a re-edited twenty-two-episode version of the fourth season titled Season Four Remix: Fateful Consequences, released on Netflix on May 4, 2018. The fifth season consists of sixteen episodes, 8 of which were released simultaneously on May 29, 2018. The remaining 8 episodes were released simultaneously on March 15, 2019.
Throughout its original run, Arrested Development received critical acclaim.[3] It is widely regarded as one of the defining shows of the 2000s and has been praised by many critics as one of the greatest comedies of all time.[95][96] In 2007, the show was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-Time".[5]
Tim Stack of Entertainment Weekly praised the series, saying "Is it beating a dead horse to once again state that this underappreciated gem is the best sitcom on TV? Too bad. Arrested Development is the best sitcom on TV!"[97]
David Bianculli from the New York Daily News stated "If you're not watching this series on Fox, the least you can do is buy it on DVD. You'll love it, and it's such a dense show (in the best sense of the word) that it rewards repeated viewing. Like Scrubs and the British version of The Office, it is the sort of show that truly deserves to be seen uninterrupted, several episodes at a time, for maximum enjoyment. The laughs-per-minute quotient here is insanely high, making it great value as a home library purchase."[98]
Alison Powell of The Guardian said "As Hollywood agents worry about the demise of the town's lowing cash cow, the multi-camera, staged sitcom, here to save the day is Arrested Development, a farce of such blazing wit and originality, that it must surely usher in a new era in comedy."[99]
Gillian Flynn of Entertainment Weekly named Arrested Development the best television show of 2005 and said in her review that "As oddball as Arrested is, it's also humane. A flawless cast—from Will Arnett's breathy, bombastic Gob to Jessica Walter's boozy Lucille—grounds it, aided by Ron Howard's affable narration. The center of sensibility is good son Michael (Jason Bateman) and his even better son, George Michael (Michael Cera). Bateman and Cera give the best reacts around—the former all weary exasperation, the latter adorably bunny-stunned. Together, they're the sweetest, awkwardest straight men on the smartest, most shockingly funny series on TV ... which is likely canceled, despite six Emmy wins. It's a perversion not even the Bluths deserve."[100] In 2012, Entertainment Weekly listed the show at No. 2 in the "25 Best Cult TV Shows from the Past 25 Years", praising its "fast, delirious, interlocking jokes that don't pander to the masses; winky gags (e.g. fake preview scenes for the following week's episode); and a cast of absurd characters".[101] In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it No. 16 on their list of the 101 Best Written TV Series.[102]
Arrested Development is an American television sitcom created by Mitchell Hurwitz. It aired on Fox for three seasons from November 2, 2003, to February 10, 2006, followed by two seasons on Netflix, season four being released in 2013 and season five being released in 2018 and 2019.
Arrested Development follows the Bluths, a formerly wealthy dysfunctional family. It is presented in a serialized format, incorporating handheld camera work, voice-over narration, archival photos, historical footage and maintains numerous running gags and catchphrases. Ron Howard served as both an executive producer and the omniscient narrator and, in later seasons, appears in the show as a fictionalized version of himself. Set in Newport Beach, California, Arrested Development was filmed primarily in Culver City and Marina del Rey.
Arrested Development received critical acclaim. It won six Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award, and attracted a cult following.[3] It has been named one of the greatest TV shows of all time by publications including Rolling Stone, Time, Entertainment Weekly, and IGN. It influenced later single-camera comedy series such as 30 Rock and Community.
Despite the positive critical feedback, Arrested Development received low ratings and viewership on Fox, which canceled the series in 2006. In 2011, Netflix licensed new episodes and distributed them on its streaming service. These episodes were released in May 2013. Netflix commissioned a fifth season of Arrested Development, the first half of which premiered on May 29, 2018, and the second half on March 15, 2019. The show was due to be removed from Netflix in March 2023 but will remain on the service until 2026
Discussion that led to the creation of the series began in the summer of 2002. Ron Howard had the original idea to create a comedy series in the style of handheld cameras and reality television, but with an elaborate, highly comical script resulting from repeated rewritings and rehearsals. Howard met with David Nevins, the president of Imagine Television, Katie O'Connell, a senior vice president, and two writers, including Mitchell Hurwitz. In light of recent corporate accounting scandals, such as Enron and Adelphia, Hurwitz suggested a story about a "riches to rags" family. Howard and Imagine were interested in using this idea, and signed Hurwitz to write the show. The idea was pitched and sold in Q3 2002. There was a bidding war for the show between Fox and NBC, with the show ultimately selling to Fox as a put pilot with a six-figure penalty.
Over the next few months, Hurwitz developed the characters and plot for the series. The script of the pilot episode was submitted in January 2003 and filmed in March 2003. It was submitted in late April to Fox and was added to the network's fall schedule that May
During the series' third season in 2006, despite months-long rumors of Arrested Development having been picked up by the cable television network Showtime, creator Hurwitz declined to move the show to another network. Hurwitz said, "I had taken it as far as I felt I could as a series. I told the story I wanted to tell, and we were getting to a point where I think a lot of the actors were ready to move on." He said that he was "more worried about letting down the fans in terms of the quality of the show dropping" than he was about disappointing fans by not giving them more episodes. He also said, "If there's a way to continue this in a form that's not weekly episodic series television, I'd be up for it".
After the series cancellation, Fox Entertainment Group sold the initial 53-episode run for syndication. In a first for its kind, the syndication involved a three-year deal with Microsoft's nascent internet video streaming service MSN Video (now Bing Video) before the series would go on to cable channel G4.
On October 2, 2011, the cast of Arrested Development reunited for a panel at The New Yorker Festival in New York. At the panel, Hurwitz declared his intention of producing a truncated fourth season as a lead-in to a film adaptation.
Six years after the series had been canceled by Fox, filming for a fourth season began on August 7, 2012. Fifteen episodes of the show's revival season were released simultaneously on Netflix on May 26, 2013. The first eight episodes of the fifth season were released on Netflix on May 29, 2018, and the remaining eight episodes premiered on March 15, 2019.
