Parental Guidance gets US adaptation

Aussie format Parental Guidance is getting a US adaptation on ABC where it will be known as The Parent Test.

The unscripted format, developed by Eureka Productions, follows 12 families as they are run through various situations, from mid December.

Comedian Ali Wentworth (Head Case) hosts and moderates conversations with parents alongside Dr. Adolph Brown (who goes by the nickname “Doc Brown”), a master teacher and clinical psychologist who serves as the show’s parenting expert.

“I hope it starts much more of a national conversation about how we’re raising our kids,” Wentworth says. “I think what the pandemic did was throw all the old ideas about parenting out the window. Things like screens and social media, where you may have had a rule about it before the pandemic. But then, you wanted your kids to feel connected, so you let them stay on screens much longer than you would have otherwise. I also think the younger generations are experiencing a real mental health crisis that we haven’t even figured out yet, that we haven’t even collected the data on it yet.”

Eureka’s Chris Culvenor, Paul Franklin, Eden Gaha and David Tibballs are executive producers, while Charles Wachter is showrunner and exec producer, and Brian Smith is director and exec producer.

Both Wentworth and Brown watched the Australian version but knew the U.S. edition would wind up looking a bit different.

“I felt like some of the things that weren’t said, or undertones that weren’t fully explored in the Australian show would really be powerful if done in America,” Brown says. ““People will watch and see best practices and some things they may think is malpractice. Every parent wants healthy and happy children. That’s the bottom line. There was a collective compassion that I saw on the set that every parent wanted to know what was the best style of parenting, even though they were pretty much advocating for their own. They were open minded and open hearted, to listen to others.”

Source: Variety