‘Undateable’ season 3 renewal close to official; could be all live episodes

At the moment, “Undateable” is virtually the only hope that an NBC comedy has of coming back for another season. Luckily, some early signs at least suggest to us that this one in particular could be close to being on its way back … but with a twist.

According to a report now coming in from Deadline, the series is close to scoring a third season renewal, but there is a little bit of a twist to it. The majority of the episodes, if not all of them, could be live, much as we saw earlier this week. That drew a number of big-name celebrity cameos, and it turned out to at least be a critical hit for the most part. Also, you’ve got a lineup of established live performers on the cast already, and NBC seems to be very interested right now in live programming. You have their annual musicals for one, “Saturday Night Live” every weekend, and the upcoming variety show hosted by Neil Patrick Harris.

While we’re not sure that the live episodes would work every week, it may have to be an all-or-nothing approach since doing half live and half in some other format could be a little too jarring. Anything that brings this show back is to us music to our ears; it’s a really underrated gem on the schedule, though we also know we are somewhat biased because Ron Funches is probably one of our favorite funny people on the planet.

If the show is renewed, it could have as many as 22 episodes coming up for the new season.