'Avenue 5' Trailer: The Creator Of 'Veep' Sets Phasers To Fun

Time to set phasers to fun — and to Armando Ianucci's perfect brand of comedic chaos. HBO has released a new Avenue 5 trailer starring Hugh Laurie as an inept spaceship captain in the Veep creator's new comedy. With the new trailer comes an official premiere date for Avenue 5: the space comedy TV series will blast off this coming January.

Armando Ianucci has made a farce out of British and U.S. politics, turned Stalin into a joke, and now he's venturing into the final frontier: space. The creator of Veep and the director behind The Death of Stalin has a new comedy series coming to HBO: Avenue 5, a science-fiction TV series that stars Hugh Laurie as a captain aboard a luxury spaceship that doesn't quite live up to its promises of giving its passengers a glamorous tour of space. It's an unusual subject for Ianucci, who has proven to be one of the sharpest and funniest filmmakers when it comes to satirizing politics, but hasn't yet ventured into genre storytelling like sci-fi. But judging by the trailer, Avenue 5 seems like Ianucci at his society-skewering best.

Avenue 5 is described as a "space tourism comedy set 40 years in the future, when the solar system is everyone's oyster. When the ship suddenly encounters technical difficulties, it's up to Captain Ryan Clark (Laurie) and his crew to calm the disgruntled passengers and find a way to deal with unexpected events onboard — though they may or may not be equipped for the task."

The series also stars Silicon Valley and The Office star Zach Woods; Nikki Amuka-Bird, who has a role in Ianucci's forthcoming feature film The Personal History of David Copperfield; Rebecca Front, a veteran of The Thick of It; Lenora Crichlow of Being Human and Fast Girls; Suzy Nakamura, who had a guest role on Veep and starred in Dr. Ken; and Ethan Phillips, who also hails from Veep and Inside Llewyn Davis.

Avenue 5 will blast off on HBO on January 19, 2019.