Researching a New World

When I decided to write a pilot about the Federal Witness Protection Program (officially known as Witness Security or WitSec), I knew virtually nothing about this branch of the U.S. Marshals Service. What intrigued me about this series concept was the thematic question of whether or not a person can ever truly escape the past. I also liked the high stakes of danger and reinvention for survival. I knew this was a ripe arena to explore because, at the time (before In Plain Sight was developed and picked up by the USA network), there had never been a TV series about WitSec. I also knew it was viable because it was extremely difficult to penetrate the veil of secrecy that hangs over the WitSec program. I knew if I was going to be able to write about the specifics of WitSec, I would need to become an expert on the subject. Easier said than done. How does a screenwriter get an inside view of a branch of government dependant on secrecy? I did months and months of extensive research via websites, non-fiction and fictional books, and interviews with FBI agents (U.S. Marshals and WitSec, for obvious reasons, declined to talk to me). The more I researched, the more fascinated I became with the arena. In addition to impressive stats about WitSec—such as the fact that not a single protected witness who has followed WitSec’s stringent protocol has ever been killed since the inception of the program—I also needed a window into how it all worked. Who got into the program, under what kind of circumstances, and how did they manage to stay alive? I also needed to decide on the POV of my arena. Should the series be from the perspective of the witness and his family, or from the perspective of the U.S. Marshals (known as WitSec field inspectors)?

Once I felt confident that I could effectively capture the verisimilitude of this world, I then needed to find a way into my pilot episode. For example, I knew that the canvas for my intended arena was much too large. WitSec is a national organization with thousands of witnesses and field inspectors. I knew I had to narrow the field to one regional office, and I decided that my series would work best from the POV of a chief inspector so that each episode logistical could focus on a particular witness. In doing my research, I also learned that the majority of the witnesses are relocated to the Midwest for both logistical and safety reasons, and that most, if not all, of the witnesses in the program were guilty of something; at best, they were angels with dirty faces. At worst, they were murderers and drug dealers who the U.S. Department of Justice was willing to use as bait to reel in bigger fish: drug lords, mafia capos, and terrorists.

My research showed me how a typical protected witness enters the program. But I, more or less, already knew that it would include: new names, new social security numbers, new zip codes, new jobs, new schools, etc. It was my deeper research that revealed lesser-known aspects of the program—and I knew that was my vein of gold. I wanted my audience to discover something new in my pilot. For example, what would happen to a protected witness whose new identity is inadvertently compromised? I’d read about a protected witness’s wife who accidentally ran into an old friend at the supermarket. And when the witness and his family had to be immediately airlifted out of their new neighborhood and relocated for the second time—new identities redux—I got excited. I had legal pads filled with these kinds of discoveries about my arena. What if a protected witness’s teenaged daughter turns eighteen and decides to leave the program? (She’d never get to see her family again.) What if a protected witness wanted to attend the funeral of a beloved relative not in the WitSec program? (They’d need to resign from the program permanently if they chose to compromise their new identity.) Could a protected witness who also happens to be a concert pianist ever be allowed to publicly play again? (No. Never.) I also found humor in unexpected places: like the WitSec agents tasked with getting a morbidly obese former mafia kingpin into shape (à la The Biggest Loser), so he would be less conspicuous and easier to protect.

I cannot encourage you enough to dig deeper and mine the specifics of your intended arena. Not only will it provide you with character quirks and possible story ideas, it will also make you an authority in the network executives’ offices. When you conclude your pitch and they start bombarding you with questions about the world of your series, you’re already succeeding. When they read your pilot script and are captivated by the tip of the iceberg of your series’ arena, they just might hire you to continue on the path of discovery.

Analyzing Popular Settings

Some TV series emerge from the creative marriage between a unique, iconic protagonist and an intriguing setting. Placing Sherlock Holmes in present-day London gives you a fresh take on the mystery genre. Taking neurotic former San Francisco police detective, Adrian Monk (Tony Shaloub), a man who developed severe OCD and phobias following the death of his wife—and making him a private investigator with a caretaker nurse as his partner—gave us a new spin on the police procedural (Monk). The one-hour drama series Justified features Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) whose swagger and quick draw suggests the 1870’s Wild West—only he’s in present day. Then uproot him from Miami (where he killed a mob hit man) to a backwoods coal mining town in Harlan County, Kentucky—which happens to be Givens’ hometown to which he vowed never to return. As the hard-living, womanizing Givens metes out his unique brand of cowboy justice, he becomes the target of criminals and incurs the rancor of his U.S. Marshals superiors.

The arenas of some series are no-brainers: Boardwalk Empire is set in and all about the infamous heyday of Atlantic City; Northern Exposure dropped a New York physician into a quirky Alaskan outpost (the fictional town of Cicely) as he faced culture shock amidst its quirky denizens. Mad Men is as much about the epicenter of American lifestyles—New York in the 1960s—as it is about Madison Avenue ad execs; NYPD Blue, CSI: NY, Law & Order, Rescue Me are all about New York’s finest and bravest; L.A. Law, Entourage, The Shield, The Closer, and NCIS: LA are all steeped in the socially and racially diverse Hollywood culture. Nip/Tuck’s arena was a plastic surgery clinic in a city propped up by beauty and sunshine: Miami, and later Los Angeles. Scandal, Homeland, and Bones are embedded in and around Washington, D.C., as was The West Wing, for obvious reasons. Scandal is about a political image consultant; Homeland is about a former POW with national political aspirations—who may be a “turned” terrorist; Bones centers around a forensic anthropologist who works out of the fictional Jefferson Institute (a stand in for the Smithsonian). For each of the preceding shows, the setting is intrinsically linked to the premise.

When it comes to hospital shows, it can be argued that the hospital is the arena, and its zip code is more random. ER, Grey’s Anatomy, and Chicago Hope (despite its eponymous title) could all easily be relocated to different cities and still be dramatically satisfying. Because hospitals tend to be their own mini-cities or microcosms, they offer unlimited story engines—which can be influenced by specific settings—but tend not to be wholly dependent upon their locales.

The Killing could have been set in any city, but the dark, wet, and brooding weather and geography of the Pacific Northwest certainly added an ominous layer to the proceedings—which was based upon a Danish series.

In Friday Night Lights, high school football is like a religious experience for the citizens of the fictional, rural town of Dillon, Texas. As kickoff nears, businesses close early, the streets empty out, and everything revolves around the big game. While the economy sputters and families struggle to make ends meet, these football games provide the people of Dillon with a cathartic experience. They cheer for victory or vow to bounce back from a crushing defeat. Football isn’t just a game; it’s a metaphor for hope in their lives. The series could have been set in any number of small towns across America, but the series remained faithful to its inspiration from the non-fiction book Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and A Dream by H. G. “Buzz” Bissinger and the 2004 film based on it. Published in 1990, the book documents the 1988 football season of the Permian Panthers in Odessa, Texas. The movie was directed by Bissinger’s second cousin, Peter Berg, who developed the TV series, and wrote and directed the pilot episode. To protect the privacy of the real life Odessa residents, Berg and his producers chose to rename the town Dillon, but local texture, nuance, and inspiration emerged from Odessa. What makes this such a groundbreaking, emotionally satisfying TV series is its documentary, cinéma vérité style. The handheld camera is our POV, so when it darts and weaves and participates in the action, it provides us with the sensation that these characters are our friends and family—that we’re sitting in the bleachers watching every game, making Dillon our town, too.

The phenomenally successful showrunner, David E. Kelley, has rooted many of his one-hour drama series in Boston: The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Public, and Boston Legal. This was not a random choice. While Kelley was born in Waterville, Maine, he was raised in Belmont, Massachusetts, and is the son of legendary Boston University Terriers and New England Whalers hockey coach, Jack Kelley. David E. Kelley received his law degree from Boston University and later worked for a Boston law firm. Kelley’s four most popular shows are not generic legal dramas set in Anytown, USA. Boston is a city that Kelley knows inside and out which adds a layer of verisimilitude to the fictional court cases—even when the verdicts come too quickly and tax our willing suspension of disbelief. While most of the court proceedings take dramatic license in service of humor and suspense, the legal jargon and specifics of setting keep us rooted in—and tuned in—to what feels like a real place.

Don’t try to fake these details. Sure, the Hamptons setting in the USA series Royal Pains embellishes and idealizes this playground for the rich and powerful on the eastern seaboard, but it also successfully captures many of the real hangouts and traditions of the place. The premise of this series: a handsome “concierge doctor” and his business partner/brother cater to and make house calls at the beachfront mansions of elite Long Islanders. But these aren’t merely generic millionaires and billionaires, they’re a specific breed of privileged, wired New Yorkers who venture out from the city to “relax” in their weekend and summer homes. Their manner of speaking, sense of entitlement, and interactions with regular residents who keep this place running all year round, not only ground this series in a playfully exuberant reality, but also provide the show with a multitude of “story engines.” The fun of this blue-sky series is its elements of fantasy and escapism, but the true-to-life stakes of its medical cases also serve to remind us that rich people have problems, too, and that while money can certainly make life more luxurious and easy, it certainly doesn’t buy you happiness. If you’re going to set a series in the Hamptons (Revenge is also set there), it’s your duty to visit the place. Go and see for yourself.

Setting also plays an important role in wholly fantastical series. Game of Thrones, based upon a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, is set on the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos at the end of a decade-long summer. The series weaves together several plotlines, encompassing three different arenas: the civil war for the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms; the threat of the impending winter on the mythical creatures of the North; and the banished last scion’s desperate scheme to reclaim the throne. Each realm offers its own geography, rules, and power structures—and yet demonstrates how their destinies are intertwined.

In Once Upon a Time, there are two separate realms: the fairy-tale world from a legendary medieval time, and Storybrooke, USA—which feels all at once current, anachronistic, and frozen in time. Both settings are magical realms where wishes can come true, evil curses can overshadow happy endings, and virtually anything imaginable can happen.

What’s essential in conjuring up supernatural and magical realms is to keep the rules of each world simple, clearly defined, and consistent. The landmark series Lost was challenged—and many would say compromised by—an ever-expanding rulebook. There were flashbacks in season 1, followed in subsequent seasons by flash-forwards and flash-sideways. For fans of the series (this author being among them), the unpredictable storytelling was thrilling, but for detractors, Lost had “jumped the shark”¹ by that point, reading like a bumper sticker that says: Don’t follow me, I’m lost, too! Evolving and expanding the rules of fantasy and supernatural series is par for the course of a super successful series. Dr. Frankenstein may have created the monster, but, at some point, the monster develops a will of his own. And so, even though the brilliant co-creators of Lost (J. J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Jeffrey Lieber) may have known how their series was going to end from the beginning, they were overwhelmed by the longevity and enormous popularity of their creation. How do you expand a finite series concept into one that could run indefinitely? Their choice was to expand the world—and sometimes that includes quantum leaps of time and space.

See interview with Steven S. DeKnight on the companion website: http://www.focalpress.com/cw/landau