• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, June 4, 2025

A Lifetime plan to produce a new series about the Chrisley reality-TV family got a boost from President Trump when he pardoned Todd Chrisley and wife Julie Chrisley last week.

Just a week before the pardon, presumably with no knowledge that a pardon was in the offing, Lifetime announced that it had a new Chrisley docuseries in the works.

The Trump pardon now stands to raise the profile of the new show following the headline-making pardons and then the subsequent release of the Chrisley patriarch and matriarch from two federal prisons.

The two were convicted in 2022 on charges of tax evasion and bank fraud. Todd Chrisley, 57, began serving a 12-year sentence in 2023. Julie Chrisley, 52, started serving a seven-year sentence in 2024. 

They were incarcerated in federal minimum-security prisons in Pensacola, Florida, and Lexington, Kentucky, respectively. They were freed hours after President Trump signed their pardons last Wednesday (May 28).

Lifetime’s press release a week earlier on May 21 gave no indication that a storyline about pardons was even under consideration as a possibility.

On the subject of a pardon, the press release mentions it only once, in the context of daughter Savannah’s own efforts in “fighting tirelessly for a Presidential pardon to free her parents.” Her battle has apparently been won.

The prospective show has no title yet, which is an indication that production is in its very early stages. The show has the working title of “The Untitled Chrisleys Project.”

If production has only just begun, the story of the Chrisleys’ release from prison and the effect it will have on Chrisley family dynamics can now take center stage.

Indeed, the press release is written based on the assumption that the two would still be in prison during the making of the show.

“In the wake of the family’s controversy and upheaval with their parents sentenced to time in federal prison for bank fraud and tax evasion, the Chrisley family is now pulling back the curtain and offering unprecedented access to their lives in a deeply personal and dramatic new series,” the Lifetime release said.

Referring to the Chrisleys’ original series on USA Network, “Chrisley Knows Best,” the Lifetime release says “the Chrisleys don’t know best anymore, but they’re doing their best to be there for each other.

“The family faces the challenge of carrying on the Chrisley name and legacy on their own with only phone calls and brief visits with their incarcerated parents,” the press release says.

With Todd and Julie now freed, the above sentence is now obsolete since the parents are now to be reunited in-person with their family this summer.

While they have been in prison, Savannah, 27, has had custody of her younger siblings, Chloe, 12, and Grayson, now 19. Savannah’s older brother, Chase, 29, is in the midst of building his own business.

Lifetime’s Chrisley show is to be produced by Bunim/Murray Productions, whose recent titles include “Surviving R. Kelly,” “The Life & Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson” and “Confessions of an Octomom.”

Photo credit: Screenshot from NBCNews.com. Savannah Chrisley and dad Todd Chrisley hold a news conference on May 30, two days after Todd’s release from prison.