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Imagine this as a sitcom. It’ll be a killer.

We have Nancy and Bob Henderson, the parents of five children who live on an average street in an average town. The funny thing about them is that the five kids have no heads, which will make for a great laugh track when the Hendersons head over to Granny’s and Granny opens the door to the Henderson Family and Bob and Nancy Henderson festively say, “Happy Thanksgiving!” except for the children, who just stand there with no heads between their shoulders, like holiday turkeys dressed in autumn flannel.

The funny thing about Granny is that she’s a transvestite and the Hendersons are a little embarrassed by him (a running sub plot) and Bob says, “Remember when you wore a suit, Father, just like all the other Dads?” which will lead to a rather poignant scene where Granny and Bob hug in the backyard and agree to let bygones be bygones after Granny reminds Bob about all the persecution he endured wearing dresses in high school and how he had to hide his true self from his army buddies, but we ease off the poignancy by then moving the lens of the camera to the children and to Nancy, who’s weeping, watching Bob and Granny hug each other and reconciling, and the kids just standing there with no heads between their shoulders.

One funny episode might involve the children, who are all twins, trying to communicate to their parents that they want friends over to spend the night but it’s impossible for them to do this as they can’t write or speak and Bob and Nancy have no idea what the children are trying to tell them with those funny arm jerks and that frenetic hopping, which is all a secret language that the children have learned over the years but have keep hidden from their parents and now regret (another running joke). The children, by the way, also communicate by scratching each others’ palms and by punching each other.

The laugh track’ll go crazy as the audience watches the children try to convey their aims to Nancy and Bob, and Bob and Nancy misunderstand the messages and bring home a pony (“Oh, you want a pony,” Bob says), give the children a swing set or a trampoline (one of the children tries it out and goes flying into the bushes and crawls out with a squirrel chattering in the space between his shoulders), or load the children into the RV for a cross country trip (“That’s what they want, Honey; they want to go on vacation!”), which is the way the episode ends: with the RV turning out of the driveway and the children lined up in the back window all headless and pathetic, Bob and Nancy beginning a travel tune, maybe something like “the ants go marching one by one, Hurrah . . . ” and then the credits fly.

The audience’ll be on the floor.

In another episode, Granny is staying over at Bob and Nancy’s because the studding of her house is being reduced to powder by termites. The episode begins with Granny sneaking a lover up to her room and suddenly Granny stops, shakes her head at the lover and says to the lover out loud, “Don’t worry about the children, they have neither eyes nor ears and Nancy and Bob sleep like the dead.”

But the kids do know because they understand the meaning of vibrations and the remaining space of the episode is driven by the children playing tricks on Granny’s lover. For example, while the lover sneaks in to the bathroom, one of the children, who’s hiding inside, opens the shower curtain with a gap-toothed pumpkin balanced in the crook between his shoulders, and the lover runs from the bathroom screaming. That’s just one example of the tricks the children play on the lover, who is perpetually hiding under Granny’s bed in the guest room when Bob and Nancy come in to ask, “What’s the matter, Dad? We heard screaming.”

The final scene shows Granny’s lover moving quietly through the house and out, and as he departs the yard, the camera moves to a window where the children are standing headless but satisfied not watching but watching the lover disappear off set and the credits fly.

The ratings’ll go off the charts.

The audience’ll want to know what this headlessness is all about but the sitcom will naturally avoid explanation as explanatory narrative is typically uninteresting and doesn’t suit comedy but the reasons for the disfigurement might factor into scripts as a diversion (as an aside, we might simply write in that the children understand the vocalizations of the people around them by interpreting vibrations on the surface of their sensitive skin). One episode, perhaps a powerful season ender, might involve one of the neighborhood kids, the only child of Chefs Henry and Tina, who becomes curious about why the headless children appear so fun-loving, have such cool and plentiful toys, and take so many interesting trips.

So, after an afternoon on the trampoline and rides on the pony, he tells one of the headless children that he wants to be just like him. Then maybe his parents will bring him a pony or purchase him a trampoline, take him to amusement parks, and so he tells one of the headless children that he’s going to go right home and use one his parents’ butcher knives to cut his own head off. The remainder of the episode will involve the children trying to make Bob and Nancy understand their friend’s impending decapitation but Bob and Nancy, of course, understand none of this, so the children take matters into their own hands and take off down the street toward their friend’s house with Nancy and Bob chasing after them shouting, “Is it a cat you want?” or “Oh my, Honey, the street lights!” and the dog too, yapping, and the credits will fly until next season.

The advertisers will come in droves. The audience’ll be on the floor.