Office-style superhero comedy for NBC

US broadcaster NBC has ordered three comedy pilots, including one billed as The Office­-meets-DC Comics.

Powerless is a workplace comedy featuring workers at one of America’s worst insurance companies who live the superheroes and villains universe of DC Comics.

The show comes from A to Z creator Ben Queen and Warner Bros. Television, whose parent Warner Bros. Entertainment owns DC Comics. Queen is writer and executive producer, with Michael Patrick Jann directing the pilot and EPing.

Other pilots given the greenlight are Marlon, which comes from Marlon Wayans and Chris Moynihan; and an untitled comedy from Matt Hubbard and Mike Schur.

Marlon is loosely inspired by Wayans’ life, centring on an inappropriate but caring father attempting to rise children with his polar opposite wife. 3 Arts Entertainment and Universal Television are attached.

Universal TV is also working on the Hubbadr-Schur effort, which is loosely based on the former’s life. It follows a happily-married interracial couple whose lives are interrupted when they move closer to the wife’s family.

Schur already has another series with NBC this season, after securing a straight-to-series pick-up for comedy The Good Place.