ABC is headed to court with its latest piece of development.
The network has ordered a pilot for Public Defenders, a single-camera comedy from writer Eddie Quintana (Apple TV+’s Acapulco), 20th Television and McG’s Wonderland Sound and Vision. The project will focus on four inexperienced lawyers in a public defender’s office, “up to their earholes in student debt, [who] work tirelessly to keep their clients out of jail,” the show’s logline reads. “Along the way, they have to rely on each other to navigate their first defendants, the absurd court system, and the copy machine that always jams.”
Public Defenders is ABC’s first comedy pilot order of the 2023 development cycle. The network has ordered four dramas to date: a crime show from Drew Goddard based on the French series Haut Potentiel Intellectuel; Judgement, a legal soap centered on a Supreme Court candidate; medical drama The Hurt Unit; and The Good Lawyer, a spinoff of The Good Doctor that will introduce its main characters in a March episode of the latter series.
Quintana wrote the pilot and will executive produce with Wonderland’s McG, Mary Viola and Corey Marsh.
Quintana had a cast-contingent pilot titled Grace at ABC last year and is a producer on the network’s upcoming comedy Not Dead Yet, starring Gina Rodriguez. In addition to Acapulco, he has also written for Fox’s Duncanville and is penning a feature for Lionsgate, with Adele Lim (Crazy Rich Asians) and Acapulco star Eugenio Derbez’s 3Pas company producing. Quintana is repped by Sheree Guitar Entertainment and Rothman Brecher.
