Yahoo To Develop TV-Length Web Series

Australians are still not-so-silently praying for some kind of legal way to access original and licensed content from online US providers such as Hulu, Netflix and even Amazon and Microsoft to combat our limited, traditional free-to-air and pay TV options.

But, while we're waiting, compu-global-mega-corp Yahoo! has thrown its hat into the in-house programming ring, announcing the development of not one but two half-hour comedy web series to herald its foray forward into the world of modern entertainment, lest it be left in the other companies' collective dust clouds.

The first show, Other Space, comes from the mind of venerated writer-director Paul Feig, who you might remember as the director of Bridesmaids, or more importantly as the creator of the short-lived but much-loved Freaks & Geeks.

Set in the early 2100s, Other Space sees humankind having reached the limits of its universal exploration – and found almost nothing worthwhile for their trouble. But then a routine mission unveils an alternate universe – a far more interesting one, at that – and you can bet it won't be long till some ragtag crew of misfits get their trek on, maybe get a little lost in space … and set phasers to fun, or something.

Backing that up will be Sin City Saints, from director Bryan “Good shows” Gordon (The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm) and executive producer Mike “Bad shows” Tollin (One Tree Hill, Varsity Blues) – so it remains to be seen whether the tale of a Silicon Valley-bred millionaire wanting to buy (and then actually buying) a basketball team in Las Vegas amounts to anything. You can almost smell the Donald Sterling/LA Clippers racism controversy being turned into a thinly veiled, wacky misunderstanding/plot device from here.

Yahoo!, which purchased popular microblogging platform Tumblr for $1 billion last year, has been toying with several project ideas since CEO Marissa Mayer took the company's helm in 2012.

So, while it remains something of an oddity online – not quite the search engine Google is, nor the email provider; mistrusted by the denizens of Tumblr when the purchase was originally announced, yet a significant number of those users would frequent the also-Yahoo-owned Flickr without pause – you certainly have to give them credit for at least trying to adapt alongside the tempestuous market in which they operate.