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How the Creators of Kevin Can F**k Himself Made Two Shows at the Same Time


The secret to telling the story of one terrible marriage — through a half-sitcom, half-dark-comedy lens.

The first episode opens almost exactly the way Armstrong had envisaged, with a wife named Allison McRoberts ( Schitt’s Creek ’s Annie Murphy) leaving her brightly lit living room, which is shot in a multi-camera format, and entering a more realistically rendered kitchen. The more realistic half of Kevin serves a bigger purpose: to illuminate the misogyny that undergirds decades of American sitcoms and — via the evolving relationship between Allison and her next-door neighbor Patty (Mary Hollis Inboden) — ask how women can be better allies to one another. He and Armstrong staffed the writers’ room with people who had experience working in a mix of genres — drama, multi- and single-cam comedy — and they all spent time rewatching sitcoms like Last Man Standing and, yes, Kevin Can Wait and TheKing of Queens.

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