'Single Parents' Receives Full-Season Order From ABC

ABC put in a full season order for Single Parents, the new sitcom from New Girl creator Liz Meriweather and starring Leighton Meester and Taran Killam.

The full season order will bring the show's freshman season up to 22 total episodes. ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey made the announcement Wednesday.

After three episodes, the sitcom has averaged 5.6 million viewers and a 1.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic in Live+3 Day ratings. According to Deadline, the most recent episode drew a 1.0 live rating in the 18-49 demographic and a 1.4 with three days of delayed viewings included.

Single Parents was created by Meriweather and J.J. Philbin. It centers on a group of single parents who help each other out so they can have some kind of life outside parenthood. The executive producers are Philbin, Meriweather, Katherine Pope, Rin O'Malley and Jason Winer. The show is produced by ABC Studios and 20th Century Fox Television, which will be sister studios once Disney's acquisition of Fox is complete.

The series is headlined by Saturday Night Live veteran Killam and former Gossip Girl star Meester. Everybody Loves Raymond's Brad Garrett also stars, alongside Jake Choi, Kimrie Lewis, Marlow Barkley, Tyler Wladis, Devin Trey Campbell, Mia Allan and Ella Allan.

Single Parents has been met with early critical praise. The series balances ABC's knack for good family comedies and Fox's "hangout comedy" edge. In an interview with The AV Club, Philbin and Meriweather said the show grew out of the parenting stories Philbin shared while working on New Girl that they could not use on that show.

"A lot of my stories about parenting were about being bad at it and feeling flawed and trying to keep up with my work, just all of the things that I think go into [what] any parent deals with," Philbin explained. "And Liz was like, 'I feel like this is a world that we could get into — this feels juicy. I feel like we could tell these stories.'"

This is the fourth new show of the 2018-2019 TV season to get a full-season pick-up and the first for ABC. CBS picked up Dick Wolf's crime procedural FBI for a full season, while NBC picked up the medical drama New Amsterdam and its science fiction mystery drama Manifest.

New episodes of Single Parents air on ABC Wednesdays after Modern Family at 9:30 p.m. ET.

Photo credit: ABC/F. Scott Schafer