F is for Family – Picture: Gaumont/Netflix
F is for Family will be coming to Netflix for a fifth and final season on November 25th just in time for Thanksgiving. Here’s the latest on F is for Family season 5 including what we can expect and more!
The animated series first debuted on Netflix in December 2015 and was part of the first wave of animated sitcoms for Netflix with The Simpsons veteran Michael Price, comedian Bill Bur and Vince Vaughn involved in various capacities.
Four seasons later across 36 episodes, we’re now looking ahead to the fifth season, so here’s what we know.
Has F is for Family been renewed for season 5?
Official renewal status: Renewed (October 1st, 2020)
Josef Adalian (also known as TVmojoe) broke the news via Vulture that season 5 was renewed back in October 2020.
The big caveat is that the series will be coming to an end after five seasons at Netflix. It’s not entirely surprising given Netflix isn’t known for keeping shows alive as long as traditional networks. Bojack Horseman is to date the longest-running adult animated series on Netflix running at six seasons although Big Mouth is expected to overtake.
F is for Family had plenty of legs to go on with a Tweet in May 2020 confirming that they already had some preliminary plans for s5 and beyond.
Responding to the news, FIFF Writers (the excellent account ran by Michael Price on behalf of the writer’s team that we’ll cite multiple times throughout this article) said: “So excited to come back for Season 5!”.
Michael Price in a later interview expressed his joy saying:
“Working on this show with the great Bill Burr, Vince Vaughn, and our amazing cast, writers, producers and crew has been the greatest joy of my life, and I’m thrilled that we get to do one more season with the Murphys.”
On Bill Burr’s podcast, Bill said “I can not tell you how much fun I had doing that show. Writing those characters and [working with] all the voice-over actors.”
He added that he thinks season 5 is going to be the best yet and “we’re going out with a bang”.
In a 20 minute interview with GoldDerby, Michael Price sat down to talk about the show’s fifth season saying that it wasn’t his or Bill Burr’s decision to end the show saying “I’d love to continue doing the show forever but at the same time I think we’ve arrived at a really great conclusion to our story.”
Where is F is for Family season 5 in production?
Alongside the announcement of season 5, Vulture also confirmed that the series had already begun pre-production.
On October 2nd, we got a look at a Zoom call with all the writers for season 5.
The FIFF Writing Team hard at work on Season 5! pic.twitter.com/R3DIL4skJN
— FIFF WRITERS (@FIFFNetflix) October 2, 2020
Typically with animated shows, it goes story first, animation production starts, sound and voices and the finishing of animation, and then the handoff to.
As to how long this process takes, that’ll depend in part on how many episodes Netflix commissions but we’re not expecting it until at the very earliest late 2021 but 2022 seems more likely at this point.
As for how the pandemic will affect the production of season 5, Michael Price addressed this in an interview with Forbes.
He stated that in the writing portion at least, not much has changed saying: “For the most part, the show is being produced in much the same way, just with different technology.”
In early December 2020, a charity auction allowed two fans to attend virtually the final table read that took place on December 2nd, 2020.
On December 8th, 2020 FIFF Writers shared the first-ever screenshots from season 5 in their basic form without color.
Picture: FIFFNetflix
We also learned that episode 501 is titled “THE MAHOGANY FORTRESS” and is written by Michael Price.
As for the release date for F is for Family season 5. Bill Burr on his podcast said he suspects it’ll be out by 2021 but could easily be early 2022.
As of May 2021, Price said in the aforementioned interview with GoldDerby that they’re still deep into animation for season 5.
First images from Season 5 Episode 7, A VERY MERRY F***ING CHRISTMAS, written by @egoldy23 & @PeteTibbals pic.twitter.com/RFoiNR1pRS
— FIFF WRITERS (@FIFFNetflix) May 7, 2021
How many episodes will season 5 of F is for Family have?
With the exception of season one, every subsequent season of F is for Family as renewed for a total of 10 episodes. That wasn’t the case with season 5 which has yet to be revealed by Netflix.
According to the writer’s account, we’ll hear about the episode count further down the line. The reason for this could be the fact that some final season gets supersized seasons (Lucifer and Ozark for example) which means we get more than 10.
Netflix is waiting to announce that.
— FIFF WRITERS (@FIFFNetflix) November 1, 2020
In the aforementioned Bill Burr podcast, he mentions that the final table read occurred in early December where he mentions the episode number is episode 44. That means that season 5 will be a somewhat shorter eight episodes as opposed to the 10 for the past two seasons.
What to expect from Season 5 of F is for Family
So far, it’s a little too early to tell what we can expect from season 5 however we have had a few clues.
The fourth season ends around October (Halloween) and season 5 will pick up straight from there with the birth of the new baby and Bill Burr’s father’s ongoing health crisis.
Season 5 will take place for the remainder of that year with season 5’s finale (and the show’s ultimate final episode) will occur on Christmas Day. There will be a Thanksgiving episode too.
Bob Pogo will be getting his own plot arc in season 5 too which Michael Price teases to be “really fun”.
Revealed about season 5 from the FIFF Writers Twitter account:
- We’re expecting to find out more about Frank’s Mom in season 5. How that materializes could be done in multiple ways but could this be the character that gets a new guest star in for season 5?
- Nora and Sues Brother are confirmed to be in season 5.
- A new character called Ceacescu will feature in the final season.
He was still alive in 1974. But a character named Ceacescu will be in S5!
— FIFF WRITERS (@FIFFNetflix) November 2, 2020
Going back to that interview with Forbes we cited earlier, we thought we’d touch on something that’s super interesting for how Netflix works.
Michael Price states that they originally pitched the show to be more like The Simpsons in the sense that each episode was self-contained.
“When we first pitched it to Netflix, we had in mind more of a standard, Simpsons style of storytelling, where each episode was self-contained. But then when Netflix ordered it, they urged us to embrace serialization.”
In an interview with us over the summer, Michael Price revealed that most of the season will take place over Christmas saying:
“this final batch of episodes take place during the late fall of 1974, and we have our first ever episode set on Thanksgiving. Our last two episodes take place during Christmas week and our finale is set on Christmas Day, so the world can spend the holiday season watching a family having a worse Christmas than them!”
Are you looking forward to F is for Family season 5? Let us know in the comments down below.
Netflix Synopsis: "Follow the Murphy family back to the 1970s, when kids roamed wild, beer flowed freely and nothing came between a man and his TV."
