By Kansascity.com

Cancer.

It’s a scary word. But executive producer Darlene Hunt hopes her new Showtime comedy series “The Big C” will take away some of the taboos associated with the disease.

In “The Big C,” Laura Linney plays Cathy, a woman who has devoted her life to caring for an adolescent husband, rebellious son and homeless brother. After being diagnosed with stage 4 mylenoma, she decides to live life to the max – even if it means big changes for her family. There’s humor in how the new life-embracing Cathy makes the changes.

A comedy about a woman with cancer might seem like a fool’s errand but as Hunt puts it, “Who doesn’t need to laugh more than someone who is dealing with cancer?”

She’s not concerned about it being too serious or too personal for some TV watchers. Hunt points to “M-A-S-H,” which became a hit comedy despite being set in the middle of a war. The one difference? “M-A-S-H” wasn’t the first TV comedy to use war as a backdrop.

“The Big C” is the first comedy about cancer. It’s new ground.

The idea for the show came out of a conversation Hunt had with a network executive about creating shows where viewers can relate.

“At the time, I had a couple of friends who were battling cancer. It occurred to me that I didn’t know anybody who wasn’t battling cancer who wasn’t doing it with a sense of humor,” Hunt says.

Once she had the idea, the tricky part was determining how to get the laughs. Executive producer and cancer survivor Jenny Bicks compares writing this show to walking a tightrope – finding balance between being funny, but not uncaring, and serious, but not depressing.

“The comedy must always come from character and from these situations. And the same with the drama. I think we feel like if we get you to laugh once and cry once in an episode, then we’ve done our job. But it is a very fine line and we police it a lot,” Bicks says.

That’s why you’ll see Cathy go from dealing with the overly positive members of a cancer support group – who designate themselves Team Cathy – to using a paint gun to waylay a school bus. The actions are comical but the subtext is very serious.

Linney committed to the TV series because “The Big C” is about a woman with cancer and not a show about cancer.

“What hit me the most was the theme of time and what do you do with time. What are the choices that we make. How we spend our time. The fact that we all have a limited amount and that it’s a privilege to grow old,” Linney says. “That’s something that I think a lot of people have forgotten in this very fast-paced world where youth is overly celebrate.”

Linney describes Cathy as a woman who doesn’t really know who she is and is now taking the time to find out.

“She’s learning from experience. She’s learning from the mistakes that she makes. She’s learning from the actions that she does that are positive,” Linney says. “There’s a lot of fun stuff that she does do because there’s a sense of liberation in a way, which is so odd, that when you’re dying you’re sort of liberated to do what you want to do. You give yourself permission.”

That learning period has limits. Cathy’s doctor suggest she has about 18 months to live. Because each year the show will deal with one season – starting with summer – the series would run six years assuming there’s no change in Cathy’s cancer.

No one’s even thinking about final arrangements at this point.

“We don’t think in terms of when are we, or if we, are going to kill her because it’s much more about the exploration of what she’s going to be doing while she’s alive,” says Bicks. “But, if it comes time that she goes, she goes. We are not going to be afraid of that. The nice thing about doing it on Showtime is that we don’t have to sugarcoat the situation that she’s in.”

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