Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/18/william_shatner_twitter_sitcom/
William Shatner to star in Twitter-inspired TV show
World's first twitcom
Posted in Hardware, 18th May 2010 19:51 GMT
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CBS will air a sitcom in which William Shatner plays a cranky old fogie whose rants are captured by a Twitter-obsessed son with a million followers. No, we're not kidding.
The program is based on the real-life Twitter feed shitmydadsays [1], which claims more than 1.3 million followers. It was started last August by Justin Helpern shortly after he went to live with his father, who it would seem rarely misses a chance to volunteer patronizing one-liners in doses small enough to fit Twitter's 140-word limit.
Shatner reportedly will play the father in a series tentatively titled Bleep My Dad Says. He announced the news on his own Twitter account [2].
"I pushed for Mr. Shatner," Helpern told [3] The Chicago Sun-Times. "He's been fantastic. He's like my dad in that he says what he wants to say when he wants to say it."
Shitmydadsays has already interjected itself into popular culture with a book that's now No. 8 on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list. It's based on the younger Helpern's relationship with Sam Helpern, a retired doctor of nuclear medicine. ®