“The Curse,” a series about a married couple who hosts a home improvement show and find themselves afflicted with a mysterious curse, is coming to Showtime in November.
Award-winning director and screenwriter Benny Safdie, known for his collaborations with his brother Josh Safdie, also stars in “The Curse.” The series is executively produced and written by Safdie and Nathan Fielder.
Fielder first rose to widespread fame in 2013 with his series “Nathan for You,” which ran on Comedy Central for four seasons. The show put an absurdist twist on the reality TV format and followed Fielder as he worked with a different real small business in each episode, offering them strange and outlandish strategies and marketing campaigns.
Throughout the course of its four seasons, “Nathan for You” covered a vast range of ideas and schemes. In one segment, Fielder proposes that a funeral home offer paid actors to portray grievers at funerals that would have otherwise had low attendance. In another episode, he develops a marketing strategy for a realtor, advertising that she exclusively sells ghost-free homes, complete with inspections by a self-proclaimed medium and an exorcism by a priest.
More recently, Fielder somehow managed to outdo the absurdity of “Nathan for You” with the mind-bogglingly intricate “The Rehearsal,” which premiered on HBO in 2022.
In “The Rehearsal,” Fielder revisits the reality TV format but with an even stranger twist this time. The premise of the series consists of Fielder finding regular people who are feeling anxious about an upcoming event in their lives, and then staging meticulously planned and detailed rehearsals of those events to help prepare them for every single possible outcome.
Safdie, on the other hand, co-wrote and co-directed the hit indie films “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time,” starring alongside Robert Pattinson in the latter.
Despite the limited details on the show’s premise, Fielder’s distinct brand of awkward, cringe-inducing comedy combined with Safdie’s knack for crafting fast paced, high anxiety crime thrillers are certain to provide audiences with a viewing experience they’ve never had before.
“The Curse” will premiere Nov. 10 on Showtime and Paramount+.
