Elena Wohl (Seinfeld, Spotlight) and Mark Damon Espinoza (End Game, Beverly Hills, 90210)
lead an extraordinary cast in MIDDLEHOOD, a new half-hour, single-camera series
about the universally comic phase we call midlife.
Season One 8 x 30mins, 2023
Meet Lisa Giordano Navarro.
She just turned 50.
She’s stuck in the middle.
OF EVERYTHING.
Her
Her quirky immigrant family.
Ending her chosen career.
A divorce she’s not sure she wants.
(No kidding. Have you seen Bill Navarro? Mistake Girl!)
Like all of us, she wants a do-over.
So she throws caution to the wind and
embarks on a journey of self-dicovery.
But why does every road seem to lead right back home?
The first 8-episode season of
MIDDLEHOOD
a new television series
from creator/writer/director Michele Palermo
dives deep into our shared need for escape while life changes all around us.
As Lisa and her family navigate our changing culture
and the generational shifts that redefine relationships,
we begin to change, too.
With the spirit and honesty of Modern Family and
the warmth and illuminating time-shifts of This is Us,
MIDDLEHOOD is a unique blend of humor and humanity
that will captivate audiences around the world.
Lisa
Lisa is a paradox – a funny tangle of head and heart, always fighting her way out of the middle.
She’s the dutiful, first-America-born generation-only-daughter of immigrants. And a born rebel. An accomplished professor who feels like a failure. A woman who loves with abandon – until she finds herself alone.
Middle-aged, mid-divorce, “mid career” (yeah, out of work), Lisa’s starting fresh at fifty, but her larger-than-life family and the love she can’t let go has this middle child feeling stuck.
It’s the holidays. Lisa’s come from NYC to drive her elderly parents from Nevada to California for the Big Family Gathering with her brothers (and their others). But unwrapping memories – and hidden truths triggers surprises for all.
Bill
There's been one big change in Lisa's life: BILL Navarro.
Lisa's soon-to-be ex is still the Yang to her Yin. But 25 years in, the contrasts that drew them together have driven them crazy and apart.
Like Lisa, Bill's a jumble of contradictions: a successful attorney who hates his job, a good husband who can't manage marriage...
And the Giordanos are no help. Bill learned the hard way: you can take the girl out of her family, but you can't take that family out of this girl.
Despite everything, Lisa and Bill still love each other. Fiercely. They keep trying to meet in the middle. But damned if their timing isn't always juuust off.
Lisa's
family
Lisa's parents, ELLA and ALDO Giordano, were a classic love story when they met 58 years ago. Their marriage? That's another story. Aldo cheated, Ella nagged, but they've made it into their eighties together... in a "can't live with 'em, don't wanna die alone" way.
These European immigrants (he from Italy, she from Germany), are still very old school, despite Lisa's best efforts and her totally opposite world view. The family dynamic is tense. And funny... in a "can't live with 'em, can't really kill 'em" way.
TANO
Giordano (55) is a textbook case of “oldest child syndrome.”
He’s the reliable, conservative, conscientious one — at least in his parents’ eyes.
NISHA
Desai (44) Delhi-born, London-bred, long-divorced, has been Tano's girlfriend and (and nothing more!) for too long.
He's bringing her to the Big Family Gathering for the first time. After sixteen years together. It's no surprise they're both a bit on edge.
SARAH
Macron left Tano sixteen years ago. When she caught him cheating. With Nisha, Running into them at the airport on Christmas Eve, realizing Nisha was more than just an affair for Tano, throws Sarah for a loop
But she has an awkward surprise of her own.
MARCO
MARCO Giordano (40) may be the youngest in his family, but don’t call him “baby”! Marco doesn’t just strive to catch up to his siblings, but to leave them in his dust. He’s a renowned chef with his own A-list restaurant. He inherited his father’s drive, his lust for life - and his temperMANUELA
Abello-Giordano (38) has family in Cartagena and a B.S. in Linguistics. She married Marco the day after they graduated from USC, had twins GIA and CESCO three months later, and SAL thirteen years into putting up with Marco's family's B.S.