‘Murphy Brown’ Episode Will Feature ‘Me Too’ Movement

The CBS revival of Murphy Brown will include an episode centered on the #MeToo movement, creator Diane English told reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour Sunday.

The episode is the fourth of the 13 planned for the show’s 11th season and was developed several months ago. It is titled “Hashtag Murphy Too.”

“I don’t think there’s a woman out here that hasn’t had some experience with misogyny or misconduct,” English said, reports Variety. “It’s a powerful movement, and we wanted to do it justice. The episode is titled ‘Hashtag Murphy Too.’”

English said the new season will be as topical as Murphy Brown‘s original run, thanks to her “incredibly smart team of writers” who have “this uncanny ability to look ahead and then putting it into an episode.” She assured reporters that “the same thing is happening again” with the new season.

“We actually stopped developing stories when we got to episode nine because we don’t want to get too far ahead,” English explained. “Some things are going to drop in September, I think, and as we get into our production schedule, it becomes more and more compressed. We air three weeks from the time we shoot the show and we’re shooting digitally so we have the ability to pop in something extremely topical.”

English said the season finale will be finished just six days before it eventually airs, so they are “really going to take advantage of that.”

Murphy Brown originally ran for 10 seasons from 1988 to 1998, ending long before social media, the Internet boom and even the proliferation of 24/7 cable news. But the FYI team — now working on a morning show — will still have Murphy (Candice Bergen), Corky (Faith Ford) and Frank (Joe Regalbuto) as on-air talent with Miles (Grant Shaud) is the producer.

Jack McDorman is also joining the show as Murphy’s son Avery, who works as the “liberal voice” on the show’s fictional version of Fox News.

“When we left these characters in 1998, there was no Internet, there was no social media,” English reminded reporters Sunday. “Cable news was barely getting started, so to take these characters and put them in the world of 24-hour cable news, which is what their new show is, was very rich for us — very, very rich. They’re all in retirement for the last few years and they want to get back in the action, especially now, while there’s so much action.”

Murphy Brown returns after a 20-year absence on Thursday, Sept. 27 at 9:30 p.m. ET.

Photo Credit: CBS