It's not particularly surprising that Marco Pennette's life ended up being portrayed in a TV show. Television lives for this kind of stuff:
One of his brothers died in a boating accident; the surviving brother felt guilty about surviving.
After three decades of marriage, his father left his mother for a younger woman — and got her pregnant.
His mother came unglued, tried to run his father over with a car and ended up institutionalized for a time.
He hasn't worked up the courage to tell his family that he's gay.
This story hasn't been turned into a tear-jerking movie-of-the-week, however — it's the new sitcom "Crumbs," which premieres Thursday, Jan. 12, on ABC. It's the show that creator/executive producer Pennette — who has produced and written seven previous sitcoms — has wanted to do for 15 years.
"Everything in there, pretty much . . . was based on my family," said Pennette, whose credits include "Caroline In the City" and "What I Like About You."
He doesn't find it odd to use humor to deal with the subject material because that's what really happened.
"This is my mom, and this is how we dealt with it in our house," Pennette said. "We had a lot of tragedy and a lot of pain, and we got through it with a lot of humor."
The first couple of episodes of "Crumbs" do what has proven to be nearly impossible on network television — the characters go through some pretty heavy drama one moment and some very funny comedy the next. Harder still, they sometimes do both at the same time.
It helps that he's landed such a strong cast. Fred Savage ("Wonder Years") plays Pennette's alter-ego, Mitch; Jane Curtin ("3rd Rock from the Sun") his mother; William Devane ("Knots Landing") his father; Eddie McClintock ("Stark Raving Mad") his brother; and Maggie Lawson ("Pleasantville") his gal pal.
Like the rest of the sitcom, the cast has the approval of their real-life counterparts.
"If only my family were this attractive and talented," Pennette joked. "My mother is a short, little Italian mom who was always in front of a pot of spaghetti sauce. So I think when she saw (Jane Curtin), she was having a little trouble with that. But I think she was very happy."
As were his father and brother.
"You know what? I bought them all homes first, and that helped a lot," he joked. They all came out for the pilot taping and were incredibly supportive.
"My mother says crazy things now and says, 'Don't put that in.' So they love the fact that they get to be on TV."
Weirdly enough, "Crumbs" grew out of a meeting Pennette had with network executives about an entirely different kind of comedy.
"I was supposed to be developing a sitcom version of 'The Parent Trap,' believe it or not, for ABC," he said. And we're sitting in meetings, and it just wasn't jelling."
At which point ABC's comedy development executives "turned to me and said, 'You know what? Your family is screwed up. Do you want to write about them?'
"And I said, 'Wow! Yeah, that's the show I've always wanted to write. I don't think anyone will have the guts to put it on.' "
There is, by the way, a happy ending to all of this. And not just because Pennette used his life as material for a sitcom.
"My mother is great," he said. "We've all come full circle. My mother remarried, and now we all celebrate holidays together.
"So, hopefully, this show will go on that long and we can start exploring that."
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com