Arrested Development

Arrested Development is an American satirical television sitcom created by Mitchell Hurwitz. It follows the Bluth family, a formerly wealthy, dysfunctional family and is presented in a serialized format, incorporating handheld camera work, voice-over narration, archival photos and historical footage, and maintains numerous running gags and catchphrases. Ron Howard served as both an executive producer and the omniscient narrator and, in later seasons, appears in the show as a fictionalized version of himself. Set in Newport Beach, California, the series was filmed primarily in Culver City and Marina del Rey.

Arrested Development received critical acclaim. It won six Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award, and attracted a cult following. It has been widely regarded as one of the greatest TV shows of all time. It influenced later single-camera comedy series such as 30 Rock and Community.

Despite the positive critical response, Arrested Development received low ratings on Fox, which canceled the series in 2006. In 2011, Netflix licensed new episodes and distributed them on its streaming service. These episodes were released in May 2013, and was among the first of Netflix's original programming. Netflix commissioned a fifth season of Arrested Development, the first half of which premiered in May 2018, and the second half in March 2019. The show was scheduled to be removed from Netflix in March 2023, but this was reverted after a deal was reached over the streaming rights.

Discussion that led to the creation of the series began in the summer of 2002. Ron Howard had the original idea to create a comedy series in the style of handheld cameras and reality television, but with an elaborate, highly comical script resulting from repeated rewritings and rehearsals. Howard met with David Nevins, the president of Imagine Television, Katie O'Connell, a senior vice president, and two writers, including Mitchell Hurwitz. In light of recent corporate accounting scandals, such as Enron and Adelphia, Hurwitz suggested a story about a "riches to rags" family. Howard and Imagine were interested in using this idea, and signed Hurwitz to write the show. The idea was pitched and sold in Q3 2002. There was a bidding war for the show between Fox and NBC, with the show ultimately selling to Fox as a put pilot with a six-figure penalty.

Over the next few months, Hurwitz developed the characters and plot for the series. The script of the pilot episode was submitted in January 2003 and filmed in March 2003. It was submitted in late April to Fox and was added to the network's fall schedule that May.

Alia Shawkat was the first cast in the series. Michael Cera, Tony Hale, and Jessica Walter were cast from video tapes and flown in to audition for Fox. Jason Bateman and Portia de Rossi both read and auditioned for the network and were immediately chosen. The character of Gob was the most challenging to cast, but when Will Arnett's audition played the character "like a guy who thought of himself as the chosen son, even though it was obvious to everyone else that he was the least favorite," he was chosen immediately for his portrayal. The characters of Tobias and George Sr. were originally going to have minor roles, but David Cross and Jeffrey Tambor's portrayals mixed well with the rest of the characters, and they were given more significant parts. Howard provided the narration for the initial pilot, and his narrating meshed so well with the tone of the program that the decision was made to keep his voice. Howard aided in the casting of "Lucille 2"; the producers told him that their dream actress for the role was Liza Minnelli but that they assumed no one of her stature would take the part. She agreed when Ron Howard asked her himself, because they were old friends; she had been his babysitter when she was a teenager.

Arrested Development uses several elements that were rare at the time for American live-action sitcoms. It was shot on location and in HD video (at 24 frames per second) with multiple cameras, parodying tactics often employed in documentary film and reality television, straying from the "fixed-set, studio audience, laugh track" style long dominant in comedy production. The show makes heavy use of cutaway gags, supplementing the narrative with visual punchlines like security camera footage, Bluth family photos, website screenshots, archive films, and flashbacks. An omniscient third-person narrator (producer Ron Howard) ties together the multiple plot threads running through each episode, while humorously undercutting and commenting on the characters. Arrested Development developed self-referentiality through use of in-jokes that evolved over multiple episodes, which rewarded longtime viewership (and in turn may have discouraged new viewers and contributed to the show's ratings difficulties).

Because of scheduling conflicts, the fourth season used a different format with longer episodes focusing on one character. The season was later re-edited to be more in line with the format of the other seasons.