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Coming to a TV near you: ABC's Chris Hadfield-inspired astronaut comedy
Everything I learned about space — how you cry, eat, sleep, vomit, wash, exercise, and more — I learned from Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. During his missions aboard the International Space Station, Hadfield created a bevy of short Q&A-style videos that showed the topsy-turvey life of an astronaut millions of miles above Earth.
In 2013, Hadfield, who is now retired, published a memoir, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, which serves up equally charismatic lessons about being a good astronaut and Earth-bound human. Adam Savage, who reviewed the book in The Wall Street Journal writes:
Equally autobiographical and instructional, the book goes gleefully against the grain of most "success" books. His perspective is reflected in counterintuitive chapter titles like "Sweat the Small Stuff," where he argues that seemingly unimportant details may loom large in an emergency and thus require our consideration beforehand. In "The Power of Negative Thinking," he says that the normal day of astronauts in training involves having countless meetings about what they got wrong—an approach, he explains, that saves lives. [The Wall Street Journal]
Now, that delightfully unique perspective will be turned into a multi-camera comedy of the same name on ABC. Creators Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker, from Fox's recently canceled Surviving Jack, have been given a pilot production commitment by the network. The show, according to Deadline, is "a family comedy about an astronaut who is back from space and finds that re-entering domestic life might be the hardest mission he's ever faced."
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Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
I think we can excuse that painfully cheesy description for the moment and put our faith in the fact that Hadfield will serve as a consulting producer.
Check out just one of Hadfield's many YouTube videos below, or go to the Canadian Space Agency channel for more. --Lauren Hansen
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Lauren Hansen produces The Week’s podcasts and videos and edits the photo blog, Captured. She also manages the production of the magazine's iPad app. A graduate of Kenyon College and Northwestern University, she previously worked at the BBC and Frontline. She knows a thing or two about pretty pictures and cute puppies, both of which she tweets about @mylaurenhansen.
