'Up All Night' changes format; Dan Harmon on 'Adult Swim', 'Torchwood' not coming back anytime soon

NBC’s moderately successful Up All Night, which tweaked its premise and dropped some of their recurring cast members and added Luka Jones for season two, will have another change as the Peacock Network announced that the show will go on hiatus in December (when a lot of shows go into reruns until after the holidays). When it returns in the spring, the show’s format will change from a single camera format to a mutli-camera one, with live audience and canned laughter. When the show finishes filming episode 11, the production will shut down for three months as it’s converted to its new format. Then they’ll tape 5 episodes to comprise its 16 episode season order. While this is certainly strange, this format change has happened before (according to Collider, Happy Days was a single camera sitcom until season three when it changed its format to a live audience). Still, what is odd is doing it halfway through its season. On the other hand, the show is from Lorne Michaels and apparently it was his suggestion to change format, citing stars Christina Applegate and Maya Rudolph’s ability to handle live audiences. Of course, moving to this new format will make the series cheaper –no more location work (like where the image from above is taken at the North Hollywood bookstore Iliad) - so this could also be interpreted as cost saving plan.

Former Community showrunner/creator Dan Harmon –who’s firing from that NBC show may have been a blessing- has sold an animated series to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim called Rick and Morty, which is about a brilliant inventor and his dumbass grandson that will premiere in late 2013. Harmon is also at work on deals at FOX and CBS as well as working on an animated film with the always weird and talented Charlie Kaufman. 

Russell T Davies confirms that while Torchwood is not “cancelled,” the show will remain in limbo for a while. He told Graham Norton that “I loved making it over there (in the USA), and I would have carried on if circumstances hadn't brought me back to this country, so it's kind of in limbo for me at the moment. It's not officially (cancelled), it's in a nice limbo where it can stew - those shows can come back in ten, twenty years’ time.” This basically means IF the show was to return, it certainly will not look like it does now.