TV

Watch the 2014 “Unemployable” pilot for Hannibal Buress that Comedy Central should have ordered

“I’m Hannibal Buress, and this is my job: Stand-up comedy. This is the only job I’ve ever had. Most people in America do real jobs for a living, though. And those jobs usually involve real skills. I don’t have any of those skills! But for the sake of television, I’m going to try out a bunch of different jobs to see if I’m actually Unemployable.”

That’s how this 2014 pilot pitched Hannibal Buress to Comedy Central — Unemployable was the series, as you may recall, that Buress tried to wish-fulfill into being by Tweeting that the cable network already had ordered 10 half-hour episodes. Only it never came to be.

It’s reminiscent of a six-episode series Wanda Sykes starred in for Comedy Central a decade earlier, 2004’s Wanda Does It. Only played more toward Buress’s strengths as a comedian and personality. And only, again, it never came to be.

Thankfully, Buress shared the pilot with us today.

“I had a pilot called Unemployable last year. It did not get picked up but here it is.”

Roll it!

The pilot includes interstitial segments of Buress performing at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn (where he used to host a weekly stand-up showcase on Sundays), with two main segments that saw Buress attempt goat farming in Louisiana, followed by cooking in a New Orleans diner.

“Why are you getting filmed here?” a young woman in the diner asks him.

“This is a documentary about the downfall of a once-promising comedian,” Buress quipped.

It ends with a tease to a future episode promising to show him coaching youth basketball.

Why didn’t Comedy Central order this to series again? Why?

Credits

  • Produced by Jax Media
  • Directed by: Andrew Barchilon, Kitao Sakurai
  • Executive Producers: Tony Hernandez, Lilly Burns
  • Consulting Producers: Ketura Kestin, Sean Patton

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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