Showtime’s “Ronna and Beverly” might be the most buzzed about television show … never actually to become a television show. The sitcom focuses on two fifty-something yentas living in Boston and promoting their self-help guide, “You’ll Do a Little Better Next Time: A Guide to Marriage & Remarriage for Jewish Singles.” Ronna and Beverly are actually played by two women in their 30s – Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo, respectively. The humor is raunchy, awkward and at times, both.
In May 2008, Kohan, Chaffin and Denbo pitched the idea of a “Ronna and Beverly” series to Showtime. The cable network ordered a pilot on the spot. Then this spring, the network declined to take any of its new pilots to series, including “Ronna and Beverly.” That seemed to be the end of that.
But thanks to Twitter it wasn’t the end. Showtime told the “Ronna and Beverly” team that for “tax purposes,” it needed to air the pilot before the end of the year and would do so in the middle of the night. Denbo and Chaffin decided to harness the power of Twitter to promote the pilot. “Ronna and Beverly” became a cause célèbre on Twitter with people like “The Office” co-star Rainn Wilson (who has more than 1.7 million followers) and Time magazine contributor Joel Stein (over 1 million followers) piping in.
Will Showtime reconsider? More details from WSJ.com’s Speakeasy blog.
