Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry and star Jim Carrey are reuniting for a new project, but not a movie! Instead, it's for Kidding, which just received a straight-to-series order from Showtime. The half-hour comedy will run for 10 episodes, and comes from writer and creator Dave Holstein, who also worked with Carrey on Showtime's I'm Dying Up Here. Kidding will be Carrey's first TV role in more than two decades, which continues a trend of movie actors wanting to enter the more freeing arena of TV (where they also often have more creative control).

Here's the synopsis for the series:

In KIDDING, Carrey plays Jeff, aka Mr. Pickles, an icon of children’s television, a beacon of kindness and wisdom to America’s impressionable young minds and the parents who grew up with him – who also anchors a multimillion dollar branding empire. But when this beloved personality’s family – wife, two sons, sister and father – begins to implode, Jeff finds no fairy tale or fable or puppet will guide him through this crisis, which advances faster than his means to cope. The result: a kind man in a cruel world faces a slow leak of sanity as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.

David Nevins, President and CEO, Showtime, said of the series that,

“No one inhabits a character like Jim Carrey, and this role – which is like watching Humpty Dumpty after the fall – is going to leave television audiences wondering how they went so long without him. With his Eternal Sunshine partner Michel Gondry on board to direct, we are on our way to a magnetic, volcanic and emotional viewing experience.”

So I am very excited for a Michel Gondry TV project, though less interested in yet another Showtime series about a rich man's mid-life crisis. Still, I trust in Gondry and Carrey's partnership, and it could prove to be a very different kind of role for the latter. Plus, even though the material sounds a little stale narratively, Gondry is sure to bring a visual flare that will set the series apart.