Thanksgiving break is getting closer every day — and so, too, is the premiere of TBS’s upcoming mystery-comedy, “Search Party.” In advance of the series’ big release Nov. 21, Brown hosted a pre-screening Thursday night in the Stephen Roberts ’62 Campus Center.
TBS describes “Search Party” as a dark comedy, centering on four “self-absorbed twentysomethings who come together when a former college acquaintance mysteriously disappears.” The show stars “Arrested Development” actress Alia Shawkat as Dory, an antiheroic young woman who, in an effort to add meaning to her life, resolves to find her missing college classmate with the aid of three close friends — Elliott (John Early), Portia (Meredith Hagner) and Drew (John Reynolds).
Executive producers Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers were present at the screening and the subsequent Q&A session. Bliss and Rogers are a duo to be reckoned with. They’ve worked together on shows and films before, including writing for the Netflix series “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day at Camp” and co-writing and directing “Fort Tilden,” a satirical comedy about two roommates’ trip to Fort Tilden beach that won the Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Feature at the 2014 South by Southwest Film Festival.
Their previous collaborative experiences served them well in the making of “Search Party,” their first co-produced television series. Rogers cited the process of “rebreaking” stories — a show-writing tactic they took from the “Wet Hot American Summer” writers’ room and incorporated into their own. Rogers described rebreaking as “throwing as many ideas up on the board as possible and then organizing them and then trying to see if things still fit and rebreaking (again).”
“I think that working on ‘Fort Tilden’ made us very much understand each other and how we work together,” Bliss added. “The experience that you have helps you figure out the way you want to work.”
In fact, the conception of “Search Party” was strongly tied to the success of “Fort Tilden.” After the latter was released to popular acclaim, “the world wanted us to do something similar to that,” Bliss said. “Once you have your calling card, people want more.” Rogers and Bliss did just that. They created a quirky, self-aware comedy about a group of millennials in the digital age. It didn’t take them long to decide on an extra hook to the story — an element of mystery in the shape of a missing-person plot. They teamed up with Jax Media, a New York-based production company, and comedian Michael Showalter ’92 to film the pilot episode before marketing it to various television networks, eventually settling on TBS as the best fit.
“We both really love mystery,” Rogers said. “I think it’s exciting to make a show that can be more than one genre. We like making things that are very funny. We like making people laugh. But also, this show is dynamic because it’s suspenseful and mysterious. There’s a plot, and it gets thicker and scarier as it goes. So it was a neat opportunity creatively.”
Given this, “Search Party” isn’t your everyday sitcom. It’s dark comedy — clearly evidenced by the show’s toned-down palette and stark lack of a laugh track. Juggling serious content and jokes can be hard to do, but in many cases, it’s the people and not the plot that give the show its humor.
“In this (show), a girl goes missing, which is not inherently funny. But the way that the characters respond to that situation is funny,” Bliss said.
TBS has recently been working to rebrand itself, announcing its efforts to include content with a focus on “bold sensibility” and digital and social media. With its unconventional plot, hybrid genre and young, up-and-coming cast, “Search Party” fits into this initiative well.
“What we really liked about it is that it was not something we’d seen on TV before, and it was something that we wanted to watch,” Bliss said. “So I think, in that way, it’s bold.”
As it turns out, even the format of the show’s release will be unconventional. Rather than broadcasting one episode weekly, as most TV series tend to do, TBS made the decision to broadcast the entirety of the first season of “Search Party” in one week — Thanksgiving week. Every night from Nov. 21 to Nov. 25, two episodes of the show will be released back to back from 11 p.m. to midnight. This type of broadcasting “kind of shows that TBS is embracing a binge-watching culture,” Rogers said. “I think it’s TBS’s way of bridging TV and digital and trying to make both worlds meet.”
