LOS ANGELES — After the sitcom “Happy Endings” was, ironically, abruptly canceled, writer Brian Gallivan looked close to home for his next gig: his own family inspired “The McCarthys,” a new CBS comedy about a sports-obsessed brood with one gay son.
Fiction, he says, is funnier than fact.
For one, the son, Ronny, played by Tyler Ritter, “is better at being gay than I am,” Gallivan said. “He’s dated, like, four guys in the first batch of episodes. I feel like it took me 15 years to date four guys.”
The show, at 9:30 p.m. Thursdays, is, Gallivan said, “sort of like a ‘Modern Family,’ but with a Boston (setting).”
If the pilot is any indication, it differs from “Modern Family” in two other, and perhaps more significant, ways. While “Modern Family” spreads its story lines evenly over members of three distinct households, “The McCarthys” has one central character, Ronny, around whom his family of loveable lunatics revolves.