The cast of “Bad Teacher”

Summer holidays -- everyone's favorite academic absence -- may be on the horizon, but there's one class that's just getting underway over on CBS.

Based on the hit, foul-mouthed comedy of the same name from 2011, "Bad Teacher" comes to the small screen looking to pass the grade with flying colors, and the series premieres Thursday, April 24, on the eye network.

To better understand the premise of the TV show, it's probably best to delve into the movie and what made it so popular in the first place. In the movie, Cameron Diaz ("The Mask," 1994, "Shrek," 2001) plays the seductive, gold-digging middle school teacher, Elizabeth Halsey, who curses, drinks and smokes in front of her students and plays videos for them instead of planning lessons. Life is peachy for Miss Halsey; she's young, thin, ridiculously attractive and engaged to be married to her wealthy beau. That is, until he dumps her and she's forced to actually put forth effort to make money ... for breast implants that she desperately wants, believing that's what will secure her happiness.

Miss Halsey embarks on a life-changing journey through the middle school halls and a class field trip, surrounded by a cast of equally funny characters, including Justin Timberlake ("Inside Llewyn Davis," 2013) as the wealthy substitute teacher Miss Halsey has her eye on, Jason Segel ("How I Met Your Mother") as the awkward gym teacher who's smitten with her and Lucy Punch ("Ben and Kate") as the resentful teacher who is suspicious of Miss Halsey's motives and teaching methods.

It's an interesting concept for a movie, but its reception was mixed among critics. More often that not, it received weak reviews and below-average ratings -- review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes went so far to say that "in spite of a promising concept and a charmingly brazen performance from Cameron Diaz, 'Bad Teacher' is never as funny as it should be."

And that's where executive producer and show creator Hilary Winston steps in.

The comical Winston, who was a writer for NBC's "Community" for its first two seasons, drew her inspiration for the television show from the movie -- the plot line and characters will be similar -- but has chosen to go in a slightly different direction.

"In the film, she was already a bad teacher," Winston told social news and entertainment website BuzzFeed last month, "but you need to start at the beginning of the story with television, and I loved the idea of this fish out of water coming into a school for the first time with the kind of attitude Cameron Diaz’s character has in the movie."

Playing TV's bad teacher is the wonderfully charming Ari Graynor ("Fringe," "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," 2008). Her character, Meredith Davis, is the alluring, outgoing trophy wife who loses all "her" money when her rich husband kicks her to the curb. Penniless and powerless, she steals someone's identity and becomes a teacher at a swanky elementary school with the goal of nabbing a student's wealthy single father and getting back to her lavish, luxurious lifestyle.

Sara Gilbert stars in “Bad Teacher”

Like the movie, it's the cast of characters around her in the teacher's lounge that really brings the story to life.

Once again, there'll be the ever-present, pining PE teacher, except this time he's Meredith's former classmate. Joel the gym teacher will be played by "Veronica Mars" alum Ryan Hansen. The bad teacher also gets a best friend in the TV show. Opposites attract as Sara Gilbert ("Roseanne," "The Big Bang Theory") plays Irene, an introverted, slightly geeky teacher who is really excited to make a friend. Of course resentment and suspicion rear their ugly heads as Kristin Davis ("Sex and the City") goes all-in as the uptight faculty president, Ginny, who is Meredith's rival and suspects something's amiss with dear Miss Davis. Rounding out the faculty is principal Carl Gaines, the head of this assorted group and played by funnyman David Alan Grier ("In Living Color," "Jumanji," 1995).

An intriguing facet of the TV show promises to be the kind of jokes that are made. The movie was rated R for its content -- excessive swearing and heavy drinking and marijuana, oh my! -- but the small screen adaptation will be considerably less raunchy because the audiences are just so different.

"I certainly cannot compete for the dirtiest joke award on CBS," Winston told BuzzFeed. "That’s a tough contest to enter into. … You can’t have the teacher smoking a bong in front of the kids, so a big thing from the very beginning was grounding the show in reality, otherwise nothing would actually work."

While the two projects do share some similarities, the television show ultimately boils down to a unique rendering of a concept with the potential to be absolutely stellar. Tune in to see if the TV adaptation of "Bad Teacher" makes the grade and brings home a good report card Thursday, April 24, on CBS.