There are so many extraordinary aspects to AMC’s announcement of the order for Happy Jack that it’s hard to pick just one to start with. So, we’ll tell you all of them right away. The new series will star the screen legend and Emmy winner for The West Wing — All the President’s Men Martin Sheen alongside his son Charlie Sheen. The two will be father and son on screen as well, in a multicamera sitcom in the vein of Two and a Half Men, the very show Charlie served as co-lead for eight seasons on. It was devised by one of the creators of the latter, Jim Patterson, together with his then-showrunner colleague Matt Ross. Now you’ll want to know right away when it will hit TV. Well, there’s actually a lot more we can tell you first.
Happy Jack: the plot of the new TV series with Martin and Charlie Sheen
In Happy Jack, for which AMC has ordered a first season of six half-hour episodes, Charlie will play Jack, a perpetual good-for-nothing with two daughters, who have grown up with the help of his father (Martin). When one of the girls comes home with her new boyfriend, Jack is stunned to discover that this life-coach-on-wheels, a former investment banker, is the same age as him. He must decide whether to keep thinking only of himself or whether he is finally ready to embrace what could be his last chance to truly become part of his daughters’ lives.
“I’ve always heard that the truly important moments arrive when the time is right,” Charlie said in a press release. “The fantastic people at AMC have played a pivotal role in establishing that that moment has arrived right now. It isn’t a secret that some time has passed, and I’m excited to return to television in such a meaningful way, inside an equally wonderful series. The team has regrouped: suffice it to say that the time has come to give audiences what they want.”
Charlie had already acted alongside his father, Martin, always in the father-and-son dynamic, in the 1987 Oscar-winning film Wall Street, and again in Anger Management, the enormous FX sitcom that in 2012 brought him back to television after his exit from Two and a Half Men, following issues tied to his drug addiction, emotional instability, and self-destructive behavior. Ashton Kutcher had taken his place in the four subsequent seasons. For Charlie, who at that time had entered a rehabilitation program and who later revealed that he is HIV-positive, Happy Jack will be his first leading role since Anger Management, which ended in 2014. The debut is scheduled for next year.
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