NBC in the US is developing a remake of July August’s acclaimed scripted format The A Word.
Two seasons of The A Word, originally called Yellow Peppers, played on Keshet in Israel between 2010 and 2014, winning multiple Israeli Academy Awards including Best Drama series, Director, Actress and Script.
The new US show for NBC has Arika Mittman (Paradise Lost) on board as showrunner and writer, plus Universal Television and Keshet Studios.
The show’s original creator and director Keren Margalit is executive producing, alongside Arika Mittman, and Keshet’s Peter Traugott, Avi Nir, Alon Shtruzman and Karni Ziv.
The show has already been adapted for the BBC in the UK, as well as for Alpha TV in Greece and NPO in the Netherlands. The UK show has also sold to over 80 territories.
The A Word is a comic drama about a family that grows peppers for export in the south of Israel, and discovers that their lovely, brilliant and musical 3-year-old son is autistic. The boy’s mother, Ayelet, learns from the doctor who diagnosed him that the condition isn’t final, and that through intense work there are children who have overcome it.
The entire family, as well as close friends and the Thai farmhands, take on the mission of caring for the boy around the clock and teaching him how to communicate. Along the way he also teaches them some valuable lessons in communication, and reveals how screwed up their own communication skills are.