Joshua Jackson reuniting with Dawson Creek’s Greg Berlanti on new HBO Max show

Boy, when people started suggesting that HBO’s new content strategy—supposedly inspired by the success of traditional-TV-made-well medical drama The Pitt—was to get back to old ways of making TV, they really weren’t kidding, huh? Tonight, Deadline reports that the streamer is set to throw together a Dawson’s Creek reunion (again), with news that Joshua Jackson, having recently finished his sojourn as Doctor Odyssey, will now star in How To Survive Without Me, a new series from his old Creek showrunner Greg Berlanti.

Jackson and Berlanti—who started in Hollywood as a Dawson screenwriter before rising to the eventual rank of showrunner on the series—have each charted long paths through the worlds of TV, dipping into a wide variety of genres that range from sci-fi to superhero stories to whatever descriptor you want to just give up and slap on Riverdale. Now they’re throwing together a cooking drama with heavy familial overtones that, we can’t help but note, doesn’t sound entirely dissimilar from The Bear, with Jackson playing a chef about to start a Los Angeles dining club while hiding “a secret that could destroy both his lifelong friendships and the culinary career he’s built in his mother’s honor.” Ray Romano will co-star in the series as the family patriarch, while Bash Doran and Robbie Rogers co-wrote the show.

Max executives acknowledged the reunion in their press statements about the series, noting, “It’s especially exciting to see [Jackson] reunite with creator Greg Berlanti on this intimate, family-driven story. We can’t wait to peel back the layers of these dynamic, raw, and complex characters.” (The other press statement, from Warner Bros. TV, also had a low-key cooking reference, so it’s nice to see that corporate PR can have as much fun as anybody.) It’s possible that Jackson is just in a mood to go down memory lane at the moment; his next role is in a movie, Happy Hours, where he’ll star opposite his old pal Katie Holmes.

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