Jake McDorman Casts as Grown-Up Son in ‘Murphy Brown’ Reboot

The CBS reboot of Murphy Brown got two new cast additions on Friday, and one of them is a twist on the 1980s sitcom.

Jake McDorman (Limitless, Greek) has been announced as a Avery Brown, the son of the titular Murphy Brown played by Candice Bergen. According to TVLine, Avery has been described as “millennial journalist who is following in his mother’s footsteps, perhaps too closely, and has his mother’s competitive spirit and quick wit.”

Atypical actor Nik Dodani has also been signed as a series regular Pat, who according to Deadline is the director of social media for the news show Avery and Murphy are working at.

Along with Bergen, the show will see the return of Faith Ford, Joe Regalbuto and Grant Shaud in their original roles.

The original show ran from 1988-98, with 247 episodes across 10 seasons with Bergen playing an investigative news journalist for a CBS television news magazine.

Deadline describes the show’s revival as “Murphy Brown returns to a world of cable news, social media, fake news and a very different political and cultural climate, with the new installment set for the 30th anniversary of the original series.”

The show’s original creator Diane English is back as the reboot’s executive producer and writer. Television veteran Pam Fryman has been brought on to direct the series pilot.

Brown isn’t the only show 1980s hit show CBS is bringing back, as the network announced in January it was reviving both Magnum P.I. and Cagney and Lacey for the 2018-19 television season.

Plenty has already been released about the Magnum P.I. reboot, including the showrunners bringing in Fast & Furious director Justin Lin to direct the pilot episode.

Deadline reported back in early February that the showrunners, Peter Lenkov and Eric Guggenheim, were also interested in a more diverse cast than the original Tom Selleck show. Those reports wound up being very accurate as the show brought in Scandal and Last Resort actor Jay Hernandez to play the titular role of Thomas Magnum.

The show is also adding in the twist of gender-swapping one of its main characters, Jonathan Higgins (John Hillerman), with Juliet Higgins (Perdita Weeks). The show has been described as Hernandex playing an ex-Navy SEAL who returns from duty in Afghanistan to become a private investigator. Weeks’ Higgins character will be a disavowed former MI-6 agent who runs the Hawaii property Magnum operates at.