Stars on Screen

Spinoff spinoff in the city: The Hecks aren’t finished with television yet. “The Middle,” the sitcom about a kooky, lower middle-class family living in small-town Indiana, wrapped up last spring after nine hilarious seasons, but in the age of spinoffs and reboots, a successful show is never really dead.

It’s no surprise, then, that a spinoff is being developed. Early groundwork on a series that’s tentatively titled “Sue Sue in the City” (yes, you read that right) is underway at ABC with an eye on a 2019 premiere date. Eden Sher (“Veronica Mars,” 2014) headlines the cast in the titular role as Sue Sue Heck — usually shortened to just Sue — a few years after the last season of “The Middle,” returning to the role that she played for all nine seasons.

Sue was always an optimist, and that won’t have changed now that she’s in her 20s. While “The Middle” was about life in a small Midwestern

town, “Sue Sue in the City” will thrust the young woman into the bright lights and fast pace of life in Chicago, where she’ll navigate the twin trials of juggling both her career at a luxury hotel and her personal life in the unfamiliar concrete landscape.

Luckily, she won’t be facing it alone. Brock Ciarlelli (“Valet”), who played Sue’s best friend, Brad, in “The Middle,” is also headed to Chicago and will be a series regular. Chris Diamantopoulos (“Silicon Valley”) has signed up to play the hotel’s owner and Sue’s boss, Finesse Mitchell (“A.N.T. Farm”), as a bartender and one of Sue’s coworkers and Kimberley Crossman (SMILF) as one of the hotel’s chefs who’s recovering from a bad breakup. Eden Sher as seen in “The Middle”