Writer & Producer
From creating MTV’s first scripted series, to six seasons and multiple Emmy nominations on Frasier, to eight seasons of Royal Pains — Jon Sherman has written and produced in every format from multi-cam to procedural.
(He also ran the Stanford Band and performed at Renaissance Faires. It all connects. Scroll down.)
Current Projects & Recognition
Recognition
Primetime Emmy® Nomination · 2000
Outstanding Comedy Series · Frasier (as Supervising Producer)
Primetime Emmy® Nomination · 2001
Outstanding Comedy Series · Frasier (as Co-Executive Producer)
Humanitas Prize · 2000
Winner · Frasier · “Something About Dr. Mary” (as Supervising Producer)
Humanitas Prize Nomination · 2001
Frasier · “Frasier’s Edge” · With Dan O’Shannon (as Co-Executive Producer)
GLAAD Media Award · 2016
Outstanding Individual Episode · Royal Pains
ASCAP Award · 2013
Top TV Series · Royal Pains
Genesis Award · 1995
Best TV Drama Series · Dead at 21
CableACE Award Nomination · 1995
Dramatic Series · Dead at 21
Environmental Media Award · 1994
Bill Nye the Science Guy · “Biodiversity” (as Writer)
Original pilots available for your consideration — each one a different world, a different tone, and a different argument for what television can do.
Addie Swift is a doctor, wife, mother, and all the glue holding her family together — which makes her terminal cancer diagnosis about so much more than just her own life. When a chance encounter offers her an escape from death, she takes it. The cure works. The side effects are complicated.
Parenthood meets An American Werewolf in London.
Based on How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims — Stanford Dean of Freshmen and New York Times bestselling author — this half-hour multigenerational comedy follows a diverse group of San Gabriel Valley parents who are only trying to do right by their kids — but mostly getting it wrong.
Like Modern Family through the lens of overparenting.
A half-hour comedy of stolen diamonds and escalating double-crosses, inspired by the classic 1988 film. Co-written with actor Andy Milder (Weeds, Apollo 13) — same DNA as the original, entirely new characters, entirely new ways for everything to go spectacularly wrong.
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Martin became a cop because he thinks people are good and deserve to be protected. Kent became a cop because he thinks people are bad and deserve to be incarcerated. They are best friends and partners, and they are wrong about everything — except each other.
What if Adam-12 had a funnier, weirder cousin?
In a world where humans and puppet/CGI "characters" coexist, the characters are second-class citizens — their best shot at success is landing a commercial. Beau and Randy are brothers (and chickens) who've just lost their gig hawking a midwestern fast food chain, and are heading to Hollywood to make it.
Live action, puppetry, CGI, and classism. Plus some very foul language.
A mild-mannered cubicle drone falls through a portal into Elizabethan England — and discovers his life is suddenly exciting, romantic, and considerably more homicidal. Every person making his modern life miserable has an analog in the 16th century doing exactly the same thing, only with swords.
The Office meets Shakespeare in Love, via Monty Python, Time Bandits, and Being John Malkovich.
American adaptation of the acclaimed French comedy series, developed for eOne Entertainment. A charming, commitment-averse man-child discovers he has a teenage son — and has to figure out fatherhood, adulthood, and his old flame, all at once, and all with zero preparation.
About a Boy meets Catastrophe if it was originally in French.
Johnnie Small was an up-and-coming sportscaster — until he got cancelled on live TV. Now the only news outlet willing to hire him is the fourth-place affiliate in Goleta, where he's still arrogant, still reckless, and still expecting America to forgive him. But the rest of the Action Six News Team aren't so quick to give him the warm welcome he thinks he's entitled to.
Larry Sanders meets Mary Tyler Moore, in a TV market nobody's fighting over.
Selected Credits
NBC / Paramount
Executive Producer
USA / Universal Cable
Executive Producer
MTV / Viacom
Creator / Staff Writer
Lifetime / A+E
Co-Executive Producer
CBS / Sony
Co-Executive Producer
NBC / Paramount
Producer
NBC / Brillstein-Grey
Producer
ABC / Viacom
Co-Producer
FBC / 20th Century
Story Editor
ABC / ABCS
Staff Writer
PBS / Disney
Staff Writer
Electus / TV Land
Executive Producer · Produced Pilot
About
Jon Sherman has spent three decades navigating every corner of the television industry — from concept and pitch to development and sale, through all phases of production from pre to post.
A seasoned veteran of comedy, drama, dramedy, action, half-hour, hour, single-camera, multi-camera, procedural, sketch, musical, and animation, his credits span ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, MTV, USA, Fox, Paramount, Disney, Universal, Lifetime, TV Land, and Viacom.
He created Dead at 21, MTV's first scripted series, and spent six seasons on Frasier as Executive Producer — writing two of Looper.com's top-10 episodes of the series. He then served as Executive Producer across all eight seasons of Royal Pains, writing 21 of the show's 104 episodes.
Before television, he was a principal member of The Nonsuche Players — a troupe of Elizabethan improvisors at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire.
Sherman is a Lifetime Member of the Writers Guild of America, West and a Stanford University graduate (B.A. English, with distinction, Phi Beta Kappa).
Teaching & Speaking
Lecturer · SCWR 451: Rewriting Senior Project: TV
Sherman leads LMU's capstone rewriting course for senior screenwriting majors — guiding students through the rigorous process of revising their TV pilot drafts to professional standard. The course draws directly on his decades of experience in the writers' room, where the real work has always been in the rewrite.
Instructor · Advanced Industry Workshop Program
Working with actors one-on-one on audition material — helping them find, interpret, and own the text. Sherman brings a writer-producer's perspective to the audition process, with insight into what the room is actually looking for on the other side of the table.
Guest Speaker · MFA Program in Screenwriting
Guest speaker for UGA's Screenwriting MFA, offering insight into the writer-producer track and the realities of the contemporary television industry.
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