'Big Fat Greek Wedding' transfers to TV series

A comedy TV series based on surprise box office hit film My Big Fat Greek Wedding is set to launch in the United States.

The CBS show My Big Fat Greek Life, starring the film’s writer and lead actress Nia Vardalos, hits American television screens tonight.

As well as Vardalos, who has been nominated for a best original screenplay Oscar for writing the film, the series features nearly all of the actors who portrayed her character’s overbearing family members in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

“What’s unique about ’Greek Life’ is that here you have the creator and writer and producer and star of the movie doing the TV adaptation,” CBS entertainment president Nancy Tellem told The Hollywood Reporter.

“I think this is a first, where you have the same people involved in the vision and the direction of the movie.”

My Big Fat Greek Wedding, an independent romantic comedy based on Vardalos’s one-woman show, was the surprise smash hit of 2002 taking more than £160 million at the US box office.

The television series picks up where the film left off with the couple returning from their honeymoon.

Sex And The City actor John Corbett, who played Vardalos’s fiance in the film, is not appearing in the series because of prior commitments and is replaced by Steven Eckholdt.