Amazon has greenlit its first-ever multi-cam sitcom — a format shot with multiple cameras in front of a live audience — and handed the show to Marta Kauffman, the co-creator of Friends. The series, titled DINKS (short for "dual income, no kids"), will also be Amazon's first improvised multi-cam comedy, meaning the performers work without a full script, building scenes from outlines and off-the-cuff dialogue. Variety

Paul Scheer and June Diane Raphael, who are married in real life, will star alongside series regular Jon Gabrus. Scheer and Raphael will also serve as executive producers. The logline: a couple who, without a marriage or children, decide to build a life together by renovating their nightmare of a dream house.

Kauffman co-created DINKS with Hannah K.S. Canter. The two executive produce through their Okay Goodnight banner, alongside Robbie Rowe Tollin and Jesse Schiller. Kauffman's track record runs deep — she co-created Friends with David Crane, which ran 10 seasons on NBC from 1994 to 2004, and later co-created Netflix's Grace and Frankie, which ran for seven.

The production structure breaks from the usual model. Amazon MGM Studios and Lionsgate are partnered with Publicis Media Content Innovation, or PMCI — the entertainment division of the advertising group Publicis Media — and PMCI will fully finance the series. That arrangement is unusual: typically, a streaming platform or studio bears the production cost directly rather than an outside media company footing the full bill.

Amazon ordered a pilot for DINKS in April 2024, according to Deadline. The project has now moved to a full series order.

Peter Friedlander, head of global television at Amazon MGM Studios, oversees the scripted slate that the show joins. Prime Video's current comedy line-up includes Overcompensating, Elle, and the action comedy Ride or Die. The platform has built its comedy reputation on single-camera shows — shot with one camera at a time, giving a more cinematic look — including Transparent, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Upload, and Harlem. A previous attempt at a multi-cam from How I Met Your Mother creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas was piloted but did not move forward.

What makes DINKS stand out is the combination of three firsts stacked into one order: Amazon's first multi-cam sitcom, its first improvised comedy, and a financing model that puts an advertising group's entertainment division in the role a studio would normally play. For a crew, a writers' room, and a set of performers who built careers on scripted punchlines, improvisation adds a different kind of pressure — the laughs have to arrive in the moment.

Scott Herbst, EVP and head of scripted development at Lionsgate Television, and Brad Haugen, EVP of digital strategy and growth at Lionsgate, round out the production team. No premiere date has been announced.