Hulu Orders ‘This Fool’ Comedy Series and Expands Its True Crime Collection

In addition to the already announced returning series (like The Great) and upcoming ones (like Nine Perfect Strangers), Hulu announced several new programs during the Television Critics Association’s Summer Press Tour.

The streamer has ordered a new comedy, This Fool, inspired by the life and stand-up comedy of star, co-creator, writer, and executive producer Chris Estrada, to series. It follows “Julio Lopez, a self-described ‘punk-ass bitch’ who still lives at home and goes out of his way to help everyone but himself,” according to the logline. “This cinematic half-hour comedy explores Julio’s work at a gang-rehabilitation non-profit and his quest to overcome his codependency issues with his family as he navigates working-class life in South Central Los Angeles.”

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Joining Estrada as executive producers on the comedy are writers Pat Bishop, Jake Weisman, and Matt Ingebretson, as well as Jonathan Groff and Fred Armisen.

Hulu is also expanding its true-crime collection with the documentary Dead Asleep and docuseries Captive Audience. The former “flips the traditional thriller narrative to explore a deeper and more troubling mystery: Did a remorseful Randy Herman Jr. really commit a brutal murder in his sleep, or was it a convenient cover story?” The film features Herman and his family, the defense and prosecution attorneys, journalists who covered the case, forensic psychiatrists, and world experts in violent parasomnia (sleep-walking) to offer insight into the twists and turns of this controversial crime. Dead Asleep is directed by Skye Borgman, with Pulse Films’ Marisa Clifford, Nelesh Dhand, and Sunshine Jackson and Sky U.K.’s Jack Oliver and Poppy Dixon executive producing.

In Captive Audience, 7-year-old Steven Stayner returned nearly a decade after vanishing on his way home from school in 1972. His family’s ordeal became a primetime miniseries which “closed one tragic chapter of the family’s life but opened another.” This docuseries “explores the evolution of true-crime storytelling through the lens of one family’s 50-year journey and two brothers; one deemed a villain and the other a hero,” according to the logline. “It’s about how truth becomes story and story becomes truth — on TV, in the justice system and in our minds.” It’s directed by Jessica Dimmock and executive produced by Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, Jen Casey, and Andrew Jacobs, along with Mike Larocca, Todd Makurath, Nick Gilhool, and Peter Rieveschl.