Rosamund Pike, Chris O’Dowd Have a Marital Crisis in Nick Hornby’s SundanceTV Comedy

By Stewart Clarke

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Sundance TV has greenlit “State of the Union,” a 10-part short-form series from “High Fidelity” author Nick Hornby about a couple in therapy.

Each installment will run to 10 minutes and star the couple, who meet in a pub immediately before their weekly marital therapy session. With each episode, what their lives were, what drew them together, and what has started to pull them apart is revealed.

Rosamund Pike (“Gone Girl”) plays Louise, and Chris O’Dowd (“Bridesmaids”) her husband, Tom. “Top of the Lake” producer will make the show for Sundance and its streaming and on-demand service Sundance Now. Film and TV director Stephen Frears, fresh off the success of “A Very English Scandal,” is also on board. He will direct and executive produce.

“I first met Stephen when he directed ‘High Fidelity,’ Rosamund when she revealed her wonderful comic talent in ‘An Education,’ and Chris when he made the forthcoming ‘Juliet, Naked,’ and I think they will make a tremendous team,” Hornby said. “‘State of the Union’ is an unusual project, so it’s all the more gratifying that we have managed to attract talent of this magnitude.”

Jamie Laurenson and Hakan Kousetta run See-Saw’s TV division and are also among the exec producers. “The short-form series has given Nick the freedom to explore a marriage in crisis which manages to be both funny and touching in equal measure,” they said in a statement.

The series will shoot in London this summer. Amy Jackson will produce the series for See-Saw. Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, and Hornby are exec producing, and Kristin Jones, EVP of international programming for AMC and SundanceTV, are overseeing it for Sundance TV.