A new comedy sitcom drama from the creator of Nip/Tuck, Glee and American Horror Story starts tonight in the US, telling the tale of a gay male couple who want to start a family and a single mum who’s eager to help.

The first episode of The New Normal will show what happens when happy couple Bryan and David meet Goldie, who agrees to be a surrogate but finds it hard to escape her mother’s judgement over it.

Following on from the critical acclaim of Modern Family showing Cameron and Mitchell raising baby Lily, the makers of The New Normal hope audiences will accept and enjoy a show centred around a male couple raising a family. One TV station in Utah has already said it won’t broadcast it, and busy-body group One Million Moms says it’ll boycott the show’s advertisers.

The show’s star Georgia King, who plays Goldie, says she’s surprised by the backlash to the show which hasn’t even been on screen yet. “A small amount of people with such strong opinions, and they don’t really know what it’s about,” she reacts.

“It is a comedy, and there are gay people in it, but it’s so much more about family and unity. There’s so many different interesting storylines.”

Justin Bartha, who plays David, told the Huffington Post that he’s friends with a real-life gay couple going through the same quest to be fathers. “The main thing to know is they are real,” he says of The New Normal’s characters. “They’re grounded in reality.

“We are always conscious of portraying a homosexual couple in a real way. To show them having real conversations, showing them in the bedroom, having real affection, not being any type of punchline of a joke or caricatures of anything.”

Watch the trailer for The New Normal below.