HBO has ordered two seasons of Merrick & Treves, an animated half-hour comedy from Adam Reed, Casey Willis and Lucky Yates. The three Archer and Frisky Dingo collaborators created the series and will executive-produce it. HBO has not announced a premiere date or episode counts.
The series is set inside Queen Victoria’s secret Royal Temporal Constabulary. Its team travels back and forth through time to stop Jack the Ripper. The mixture of Victorian crime and time travel gives the creators a premise with room for very different kinds of comedy. The announcement does not yet name the characters or voice cast.
Reed created Archer, the long-running animated spy comedy. Willis and Yates worked on that series and on Frisky Dingo. Their reunion now comes with an unusually large order for a new animated show: two seasons before the first has premiered. TFC Productions is involved, with Joel Begleiter as executive producer and Kelly Wu as co-executive producer. HBO comedy chief Amy Gravitt said the network had admired the trio’s work for years.