LOUIS C.K. COMING BACK TO TV

Variety reports comedian Louis C.K. made a new pilot for FX. The show is tentatively titled Louis and is based on his life as a divorced comedian with two kids. The show will be told through a mixture of his stand-up routines and sketches with him, his kids, friends and an ex-wife.

It's a grassroots project for Louis, who not only wrote "Louie," but also cast it, directed it and even edited it, with the help of $250,000 in seed money from FX. Louis shot the low-budget project in New York.

"I said, wire me a quarter of a million dollars and I'll give you a DVD in a month, and amazingly, they did," Louis said. "Because it was only $250,000 they had the reasonable expectation that I wasn't going to disappear with the money. To them, it's a low-risk thing, and for me, I was able to try different stuff."

Louis' life situation as a recently divorced man still co-parenting with his ex-wife largely informs both his current standup routine and this new show. His experience as a forty-something man back on the dating scene also plays a large role.

The pilot includes two stories: In one vignette, "Louie" must volunteer at his kids' school, and things go horribly wrong when he chaperones a field trip. In another bit, he goes on a terrible date.

"It's a unified stream of consciousness," he said of the show. "It all comes from me being a 41-year-old divorced comic trying to raise children, meet people and have sex."

I'm hoping this show will be better than his previous HBO sitcom, Lucky Louie. His stand-up act is hilarious and he's been one of my favorite comedians for years. As long as his humor is uncensored, the show should be gold.