George Clooney Discusses His New TV Show ‘Catch-22’ — Plus Check Out the New Trailer!

Since his departure from ER, fans of George Clooney have been hoping for his return to television, and that’s finally happening in the new Hulu miniseries Catch-22, based on the novel by Joseph Heller. Interestingly, George himself doesn’t seem too concerned with what medium he’s working in, whether it’s the big screen or the small.

“I just care about the quality of the work,” he explained at the recent TCA Winter Tour session for the show, “and what we’re able to do. And television is doing some amazing things. We have an eight-part piece on Watergate we’re doing now … we just want to work.” Check out the trailer for George’s new show Catch-22 below! 

Catch-22 is described by Hulu as “the story of the incomparable, artful dodger, Yossarian, a US Air Force bombardier in World War II who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy, but rather his own army which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to avoid his military assignments, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule which specifies that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers which are real and immediate is the process of a rational mind; a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but a request to be removed from duty is evidence of sanity and therefore makes him ineligible to be relieved from duty.”

George commented, “It was really exciting to see why this story lasted and stood the test of time. What drew me in was how the characters in this version unspooled, but I was reluctant to take it on. It’s a beloved novel and I didn’t want to get into the middle of that. The book was Joseph Heller’s response to the Korean War, set in World War II and taken up by the Vietnam generation who embraced it as an anti-war book.

“There’s no way you can do this half-assed,” he said. “It’s a pretty gruesome business, war is. The story was made to make fun of all the red tape and bureaucracy of war and the ridiculousness of war. I think it still plays. All of us spend our days and nights worrying about those situations. This story is just reflecting on the insanity of it.”

Catch-22 premieres on Hulu on May 17.