"The Bernie Mac Show" will be off the air a little longer than originally planned as its star recovers from pneumonia.

Production of the FOX comedy was scheduled to start this week, but Mac is still shaking off the effects of pneumonia, which was compounded by the comic's unusually hectic work schedule over the summer. The show is now set to go back into production next week, the Hollywood trade papers report.

Mac and the show's producers agreed in mid-October to take a few weeks off to let him recover. When the scheduled start date came around this week, however, both the star and the producers agreed that Mac needed more time.

Since "The Bernie Mac Show" is a single-camera show, production takes longer than on a traditional, multi-camera comedy. Mac appears in almost every scene of the show, which makes for long workdays.

The handful of episodes that have aired this fall were shot last spring, before Mac went to work on "Ocean's Twelve" and another feature, "Guess Who," with Ashton Kutcher. He followed those two shoots with promotional work for the film "Mr. 3000" and was planning to jump back into the show without a break.

FOX will continue airing the unscripted series "Nanny 911" in "Bernie Mac's" 9 p.m. Wednesday spot for at least the next two weeks.