‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Drops a Surprise Episode and Previewing the Winter TV Slate. Plus, Sharon Horgan on Creating and Starring in ‘Youth.’

Chris and Andy talk about “A Story of Derry,” a surprise Halloween episode of ‘It: Welcome to Derry,’ and why they think more shows should experiment with bonus drops (10:16). Along the way, they react to Curry Barker’s new short film (19:11) and the news that NBC is developing a gender-swapped police procedural inspired by ‘The Great Gatsby’ (32:29). Then they preview a handful of upcoming shows, including ‘The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins,’ ‘Black Doves,’ ‘Blade Runner 2099,’ and more (37:35). Later, Chris is joined by Sharon Horgan, creator and star of ‘Youth,’ to talk about the inception of the series, centering London as a character, why she writes likable yet flawed characters, and so much more (01:00:57). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Follow us on IG and TikTok! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Sharon Horgan Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Studio Production: Jacob Cornett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:04Speaker 02

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 1:07Chris Ryan?

  Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the Ringer dot com. And joining me in the studio, his Haley Stevens costume is non-refundable. It's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:23Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, you don't understand. It was a Haley Stevens visiting a black church costume.

• 1:28Chris Ryan?

  You and I should have gone as Haley Stevens and K-Pax for Halloween.

• 1:32Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that's good. What if we had gone as Haley Stevens and her cool fiance?

• 1:35Chris Ryan?

  I like candy with razor blades in them. Surprise.

• 1:38Andy Greenwald?

  You just wanted to do Pax again. K-Pax. That's what that movie was about, right?

• 1:43Chris Ryan?

  Andy, today on the show, what a, what a huge show for us today. Not only are we in person, we have just a grab bag of stuff to do. We are going to talk about the fall and rise of Reggie Dinkins coming back. I have some end of the year TV preview, kind of the rest of the next two months as we, as we rock into November. Some news notes and interesting tidbits from my weekend of watching. And then the second half of the show, I'm going to be joined by Sharon Horgan.

• 2:10Andy Greenwald?

  That's awesome.

• 2:11Chris Ryan?

  Who's series Youth or season, first season of Youth aired. It's finale last night on HBO Max. And Sharon is going to come by and chat with us about youth. And I'm excited to talk to her also about some of my, my faves by her, like, like Motherland.

• 2:23Andy Greenwald?

  You talked to her before?

• 2:24Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 2:25Andy Greenwald?

  She's great. She's delightful. You're gonna love her.

• 2:28Chris Ryan?

  Give me any tips. That would be great.

• 2:29Andy Greenwald?

  I just think it's cool that she's chilling in the green room, allowing me to do this part of the show with you.

• 2:33Chris Ryan?

  Come on, you always have a home here.

• 2:35Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you. I was just saying as we sat down that, you know, over 30 now, over 30 years of friendship, there are a number of CR looks that I feel that I get, that I look forward to, like some classic looks. Like one of my favorites was when I played you My Chemical Romance as the Black Parade in the advanced CD in my apartment and just sort of watched you listen to it.

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  Did I, was I like, kind of like Alonzo Mourning, Mourning that?

• 2:59Andy Greenwald?

  No, you were dialed in. You were dialed in. You have never been more focused in your life. But one of the more recurring looks that I enjoy is the look you give me when I am frantic and you are calm.

• 3:12Chris Ryan?

  I, I don't, you know, my sole focus is just making the best possible content with you. And if you're here, I know we're 80% there then. You know what I mean?

• 3:24Andy Greenwald?

  90, honestly.

• 3:26Chris Ryan?

  Now, this is, we are in a little bit of an in-between zone. And also, I would say, in this forest, two paths have diverged. You know, like, we're not watching the same stuff every weekend and watching like, we have the Lowdown, we have Black Dove's coming. We'll get into some other stuff that's coming. But I thought we could just do some news. And I had a very active watching weekend, much of it horror based because of Halloween.

• 3:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:50Chris Ryan?

  So I could talk a little bit about what I watched over the weekend. What did you, what have you been up to? I know it's, it's family time.

• 3:55Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you. Thank you for asking. Yeah, I'm back home.

• 3:58Chris Ryan?

  Just you and Moro Ojomo.

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  Like just people who we expected more from? The defensive front of the Eagles and myself? Which is the bigger letdown for you this fall?

• 4:10Chris Ryan?

  We could do After Dark right now if you want.

• 4:12Andy Greenwald?

  Me or the team? Well, the biggest thing that I, I don't think this is necessarily, I want to preface this, I don't know how interesting this is, but this is just the way parenting works, which is that, as you know, I've spent years being like to my children, you know, MCU Phase Two kind of rip.

• 4:30Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God, you got into some Marvel stuff.

• 4:31Andy Greenwald?

  That might be fun.

• 4:32Chris Ryan?

  What is MCU Phase Two?

• 4:33Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know.

• 4:34Chris Ryan?

  Is that post Dark World?

• 4:35Andy Greenwald?

  Literally don't remember. But I was, I've been trying to like, find a way, because they love the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. And I was like, you know, he's part of a larger universe. And they're like, oh, Tom Hardy? And I'm like, not that one.

• 4:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:49Andy Greenwald?

  But of course, the way this works is, as, as you and listeners know, I've been, I've been away a lot of this fall, as I am almost every fall, this time in the great New York City. And this is the time that my older daughter has fallen. She's gone Marvel crazy. She's just churning through.

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  Has she gotten to WandaVision, Agatha Vision Quest yet?

• 5:07Andy Greenwald?

  No, so she is, first of all, she's watching them chronologically within the story.

• 5:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:12Andy Greenwald?

  So apparently, the ill-fated 2021 or 2020 Black Widow film is like next up. Even though.

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  Kind of a dark movie.

• 5:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, well, you mean in terms of like Scarlett's relationship with Alan Horn and the leadership at Disney?

• 5:28Chris Ryan?

  Like being a child soldier, but yeah.

• 5:31Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. But, um, but yes, it's been fascinating and big, big, big Tony Stark fan now. Big Downey, big Downey gal.

• 5:43Chris Ryan?

  And are you doing like, are you living out and being like, he's actually an arms dealer?

• 5:52Andy Greenwald?

  No, the movies do that, actually. The movies do a good job of interrogating. I would say the biggest thing was I made it home in time for Age of Ultron, which was interesting because, you know, the Sokovia Accords are very important for us.

• 6:05Chris Ryan?

  They are. I mean, they're one of the foundational texts for this podcast.

• 6:08Andy Greenwald?

  I know, and also just how we kind of view international diplomacy. You know what I mean? Like the Strait of Hormuz would have stayed open.

• 6:14Chris Ryan?

  If Ultron.

• 6:15Andy Greenwald?

  Well, if King T'Chaka had been allowed to finish his speech at the convention in Vienna. But I was appreciative of a couple of things. One, that she was willing to note that this movie was not great. Two, I would say that Joss Whedon's dialogue is pretty chopped, as my child would say in that movie.

• 6:37Chris Ryan?

  I don't think that it's been treated well by time. I wonder if, if his fortunes had been different in, in the personality department or in the kind of like public perception department, if people would be kinder, you know, if people would be like.

• 6:56Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think?

• 6:56Chris Ryan?

  That was, that was of the time that was like super like.

• 6:59Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think?

• 6:59Chris Ryan?

  Oh, so Amazeballs, BuzzFeed, like, that's how we talked, right?

• 7:03Andy Greenwald?

  Is your feeling about Age of Ultron?

• 7:06Chris Ryan?

  You, you were constantly like, dude, check out this awesome post where they can't decide what color the dress is.

• 7:12Andy Greenwald?

  That was like that. But I just like to text you stuff to keep you engaged. Is your feeling about Joss Whedon's cancellation, to paraphrase, woke one was crazy?

• 7:21Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 7:21Andy Greenwald?

  Are you on the record with that?

• 7:22Chris Ryan?

  I think, I think, I think the, the jury of his peers has spoken. It sounds like that's pretty definitive.

• 7:29Andy Greenwald?

  I think there's a lot of time in that movie spent towards trying to nudge Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff into a romance. Do you remember that?

• 7:36Chris Ryan?

  I do, yeah.

• 7:38Andy Greenwald?

  That hasn't aged well.

• 7:39Chris Ryan?

  Why?

• 7:39Andy Greenwald?

  Well, my daughter's a big Natasha Steve shipper. I'm just fascinated, like, she's so locked in.

• 7:44Chris Ryan?

  So she doesn't know that Steve's got like a one and only that he is going to spend the rest of his time dancing with until Doctor Doom takes him out?

• 7:51Andy Greenwald?

  Brother, that old bag died at the beginning of Civil War.

• 7:54Chris Ryan?

  But she back.

• 7:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but we're not there yet. So anyway, all I want to say about that is that, is that I also was like, do you want to go see Wildwood this weekend? Do you want to support the Knight family in there? No, but it does look beautiful and people really liked it. They did not want to see it. And I said, well, have you guys, when's the last time you guys like saw a movie in the theater? And Audrey's like, oh, I saw a movie called Forgotten Island. Do you know about this? This was a kid's movie that was out like a month ago, it was a cartoon. And this was a really chilling moment.

• 8:22Chris Ryan?

  That would have been dope if your daughter was like, I went and saw Yi Yi at the New Bev.

• 8:26Andy Greenwald?

  She saw You Can See Everything, just to feel closer to her dad. And I said, what did you think of that movie? And she said, it was just noise. It's just a noisy movie.

• 8:37Chris Ryan?

  She really is your daughter.

• 8:38Andy Greenwald?

  It was cliche and I was like, oh, no.

• 8:40Chris Ryan?

  You did it.

• 8:41Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, no, the disease jumps generations.

• 8:45Chris Ryan?

  Before we get to what I watched this weekend, I just want to put out an official public statement.

• 8:50Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 8:50Chris Ryan?

  Which camera? Which is, is that my camera? Obviously, I'm aware that Michael Mann shot himself in the leg at a West LA gun range.

• 8:58Andy Greenwald?

  All of our thoughts went to you.

• 9:00Chris Ryan?

  I appreciate everybody reaching out. My comment is a gif of Robert De Niro saying, that's the discipline in Heat. If you live by the, probably nine millimeter Beretta, then you may take a flesh wound by the nine millimeter Beretta. I am holding off on making too many jokes.

• 9:21Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 9:22Chris Ryan?

  Because it's like, let's get a medical update on when an 83-year-old man shoots himself in the leg, even if it is just a flesh wound.

• 9:28Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 9:28Chris Ryan?

  I suppose that like, thoughts and prayers are with Mike Mann.

• 9:32Andy Greenwald?

  Can I ask you something? Like, I know that my impression of like, Mike Mann the man, from what we've heard and from stories, people that spent time with him, is that he does, he is really about that life. Now, I don't mean like gunplay, but I do mean that like, when he goes to Miami, he likes to be put on fast boats and stuff.

• 9:51Chris Ryan?

  A lot of like, I wouldn't ask anybody to do anything that I wouldn't do myself, you know?

• 9:57Andy Greenwald?

  Wow, is he a fiend for mojitos?

• 9:58Chris Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 9:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Chris Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 10:01Andy Greenwald?

  So it is, yeah, I mean, I think the thing about this story was, and it is, it is a genuine thoughts and prayer situation. We're not joking about that. But it is like, well, okay, that tracks.

• 10:11Chris Ryan?

  As soon as he walks out of Cedars with crutches and is like, phew, then we can all, then I will start being like, every time Michael Mann, like POV Michael Mann, and it's every time a guy in a Michael Mann movie is holding a gun on someone else. But until then.

• 10:30Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think this is connected to the fact that I believe it was announced just prior to this injury that the filming of Heat Two was delayed?

• 10:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:38Andy Greenwald?

  So is this like an idle hand situation?

• 10:39Chris Ryan?

  No, I think it was probably just like, he was just trying to get a feel for the old magic, you know? Get a feel for the, what is it? Graphite, what's, what's the smell of gun, gunpowder in the air?

• 10:50Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you for asking me that. I'd love to weigh in on it. What's the terroir of gunplay? Do you think anyone else was there with him? Like, any of the cast members? Do you think he was showing off?

• 10:59Chris Ryan?

  No, I don't think so. I think we would have heard by now. It was just like Adam Driver crying as Michael Mann gets wheeled out.

• 11:06Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think a 911 call would be released of Adam Driver?

• 11:08Chris Ryan?

  Dude, that would be really funny.

• 11:11Andy Greenwald?

  Don't laugh.

• 11:15Chris Ryan?

  This weekend, I watched two very interesting releases. I watched a number of things, but the two things I wanted to tell you about.

• 11:21Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 11:22Chris Ryan?

  Of varying levels of success and interest, but I thought were basically my favorite kind of use of the wild new digital marketplace of ideas that we exist in. One was a story of Derry, which was a surprise drop on HBO Max.

• 11:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, what's the deal with this?

• 11:38Chris Ryan?

  So this is a kind of appetite palate cleanser because Welcome to Derry, which I believe aired in 25, is not coming back until late 27 or 28. This, it, Welcome to Derry, this sort of Stephen King series on HBO that the Machetes do. And the first one was set, I believe, in the early 60s. The second season's gonna be a Great Depression story about like

• 12:04Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, really?

• 12:05Chris Ryan?

  bank robbers on the run.

• 12:07Andy Greenwald?

  So this is like what we wanted the Nick to be, but they're doing it for the Killer Clown?

• 12:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes, but they take five years in between seasons, so.

• 12:14Andy Greenwald?

  Well.

• 12:15Chris Ryan?

  So with the show not coming back till 28, they decided to throw up this 30-minute, kind of quick and dirty action-adventure horror episode about three young Chakapi people confronting a monster in the woods near their village. So it's like a, I don't know, 18th century, early 18th century, I suppose. And Zom Klaran is in it, shows up as a kind of weird, ambiguous as to whether he's good or bad guy hanging out in the woods. I'm not like so deep in Stephen King that I knew about this, but apparently the turtle god that he sees when he smokes his peace pipe in this episode is very important, Maturin.

• 12:58Andy Greenwald?

  Oh shit, this is Maturin?

• 13:00Chris Ryan?

  Do you know who I'm talking about?

• 13:01Andy Greenwald?

  I'm familiar with other turtle gods, but this is interesting to me.

• 13:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I guess that turtle god plays a big role in The Dark Tower. So it was just like an interesting.

• 13:11Andy Greenwald?

  Chris, what role could the turtle god play in The Dark Tower? Put your notes away, talk to me.

• 13:16Chris Ryan?

  Well, you want me to actually answer?

• 13:17Andy Greenwald?

  Just speculate.

• 13:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's like, apparently, it's like the turtle versus the evil is like the eternal battle.

• 13:23Andy Greenwald?

  Is the turtle good?

• 13:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's balancing everything out.

• 13:28Andy Greenwald?

  That's chill.

• 13:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:30Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 13:30Chris Ryan?

  I mean, this is Steve King, man. I can't answer for what he was getting up to in the 80s.

• 13:34Andy Greenwald?

  I think we all know what he was getting up to.

• 13:36Chris Ryan?

  But this is directed by Tazba Chavez, who did some stuff on Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls. And I just thought it was very smart. It was very cool to just throw up something. Actually, it got a lot of special effects. It's not cheap, but it was a very cool 30-minute little short story about this area, about the Derry area at a different time.

• 13:57Andy Greenwald?

  The Daria.

• 13:57Chris Ryan?

  The Daria.

• 13:58Andy Greenwald?

  The Bear did this as well.

• 14:01Chris Ryan?

  With Gary, yeah.

• 14:03Andy Greenwald?

  Gary, Welcome to Berry.

• 14:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:05Andy Greenwald?

  The Berry. Do you think that is a way forward for more nimble, creative shows to navigate the delays?

• 14:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I wish there was a Pluribus thing like this, for instance.

• 14:17Andy Greenwald?

  Great example.

• 14:17Chris Ryan?

  It's just been announced that Pluribus has begun shooting season two.

• 14:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Chris Ryan?

  I saw a report that the scheduled shoot time is 255 days.

• 14:27Andy Greenwald?

  That would track with the way Vince Gilligan productions have stretched before. I mean, Better Call Saul.

• 14:32Chris Ryan?

  But they never had the money to go 255 days for a season, did they?

• 14:35Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, that's an insane number of days, number of shoot days.

• 14:38Chris Ryan?

  So maybe, I can't remember where I saw that, but it was like, people were commenting on it like, wouldn't it be cool to know you were employed for 255 days if you were working on a show? And that's awesome, but that show is not coming out until 2028.

• 14:53Andy Greenwald?

  But do you think?

• 14:54Chris Ryan?

  I feel like.

• 14:55Andy Greenwald?

  But like, do you think as a viewer, would you rather have the complete statement? Meaning Vince Gilligan took a year plus with his group of writers to craft this. They're going to take what sounds like almost an entire calendar year to film and to post on it. And then what will be delivered will be the next definitive statement? Or do you wish it could get a little faster? I mean, he's a bad example because he is not a fast and loose guy. But for example, Widows Bay will be off the air for a while. And Widows Bay has been really nimble with the like, the trailers and stuff that predated the show with some of the travel footage and stuff like that. Like, would you be into a little drip-drip of things like that?

• 15:37Chris Ryan?

  I prefer something like this, which even though it introduces apparently a very important character in the Stephen King universe, feels like a contained story. I wouldn't want to feel like you had to watch this special to understand what's gonna happen. You know? Like, I don't like the post-credit sequencification of things. Like, I would just like to have a cool story. And, you know, Widows Bay is a really good example of a show that has such a deep acting bench that it's like, could you do like a 30-minute Dale Dickey episode? That kind of is in between the two seasons and, you know. I just thought it was a really good idea. And also, like, this isn't something that you have to now alert all the advertisers and change like.

• 16:19Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it's holiday-themed as well.

• 16:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so I was like, I don't really understand why more shows don't try to do stuff like this. I suppose something like Gary for The Bear wound up being probably like not remarked upon very deeply that Richie was in that car accident, right?

• 16:36Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think in retrospect, I think I underrated, especially considering what the last season ended up being, I think I underrated what that episode was. Because there was a lot more of what I loved about the show contained within that episode than there was in season five, I would say. So it was a nice gift in retrospect to have it.

• 16:58Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 16:58Andy Greenwald?

  And to have time with characters just kind of sinking in, which the last season did not give us a lot of space to do, both because of what the show had become at the end and also because of the time constraint that it was basically a one-night, one-service. But the other thing in retrospect was that the final moments were ridiculous. Because the, I don't know whose idea it was, or whether it was a note or whether it just came from the creative process, that they felt the need to do connective tissue. For people who don't know, I don't think this is, it's not even, it's not a spoiler.

• 17:28Chris Ryan?

  The entirety of The Bear has been out for a while.

• 17:30Andy Greenwald?

  But it's not just that. The whole point of this anecdote is that it is not a spoiler, that at the end of this episode, Richie is back, we're back in the present, the night of the fifth season. And Richie gets in a car accident and we cut to black. And then the show came back and the car accident was a minor inconvenience that did not even delay him getting to work.

• 17:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Andy Greenwald?

  That sucks. That piece of it, it didn't need it, it stood on its own.

• 17:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I think you could make the argument that perhaps Richie is like Carpe Diem. You know, we only live once and it could be taken away from us in a minute. And like, let's try to make The Bear work and that's why I am the way I am. And maybe I should ask Jess out on a date or something, but.

• 18:09Andy Greenwald?

  Did any of that happen?

• 18:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, broadly, sure.

• 18:14Andy Greenwald?

  I wonder, I mean, we can move on, but like, to answer your first question in there, which is why more shows don't do it, is because every, I mean, despite the larger budgets or the more attention or the larger amount of time, there isn't really anything within the structure of a TV writer's room in pre-production and production that would allow a splinter unit to attend to something faster. It's just, you're not built that way.

• 18:38Chris Ryan?

  Part of the reason why I've gotten kind of into this idea is like, on English TV, where the episode orders are much shorter.

• 18:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  I think that there's more of a tradition of doing Christmas specials and doing one-offs like that, whether it's at The Office or, you know, Pulling from Sharon Horgan did it, you know, like.

• 18:54Andy Greenwald?

  Should we call Sharon in early?

• 18:56Chris Ryan?

  I think that that's a fun way of doing things. But ultimately, like, you start to get into like, if you were doing, say, an X-Files-style show, you could say, well, we could do a monster of the week episode that feels like a one-off. So why do a Christmas special of this show?

• 19:11Andy Greenwald?

  I think the bigger issue is, do you have, and I don't know how, I don't know how it runs its room, but it does sound like this was really a splinter unit. And that they brought in people to play in the universe.

• 19:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 19:23Andy Greenwald?

  With maybe some light supervision from someone. So that's really the only way that it could work. Because if you have the core group of writer-producers desperately tasked with getting the season ready, you can't really pull some of them off to do something unrelated. But if you have a pliable universe that could welcome in other visions, you could do something like invite, I don't know, Jordan Peele to do a Widows Bay story.

• 19:44Chris Ryan?

  That'd be cool.

• 19:44Andy Greenwald?

  And you could do it at any time zone or whatever, or timeline. The other thing that I was thinking, and this is a bad example because this is the one show that actually does keep a schedule, would be you could do a pit night shift story.

• 19:58Andy Greenwald?

  You could just do it, right? You could just do like a three-episode, a one-episode, or whatever.

• 20:02Chris Ryan?

  I would wonder whether or not at a certain point, they would just be like, why don't we have just two pits on? That would be cool.

• 20:08Andy Greenwald?

  Why not two pits?

• 20:09Chris Ryan?

  Why not two pits? Uh, the other thing that I watched that was a fun curveball was, uh, Curry Barker just put a five-minute short film up on YouTube.

• 20:17Andy Greenwald?

  Look at these guys. This is the new media.

• 20:19Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it's called Mama Bear, and it's a very intense, uh, very unnerving, quick, short film that some people have speculated takes place within the obsession world.

• 20:34Chris Ryan?

  Were it not for obsession, I don't know that I... Were not for obsession's massive success, I don't know that I would make that jump, but it would... I, I, watching it, re-watching it with that in mind, I was like, oh, I can see what this is, what this might mean, or how, why people might jump to this conclusion.

• 20:51Chris Ryan?

  You know, Barker has said that obsession has like a whole world in that movie, and they just, you know, they didn't show it because of budget limitations and...

• 20:58Andy Greenwald?

  In the sense that like, there's more things to be obsessed over, or like in the background?

• 21:02Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot of one-wish willows, you know, like, there's a lot of, and who is, what is that office that he calls? Did you wa- you watched Obsession? No. Oh, I thought you were like, I, I challenged myself to do those.

• 21:12Andy Greenwald?

  I watch Weapons.

• 21:14Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's right.

• 21:14Andy Greenwald?

  And I dialed up Backrooms.

• 21:16Chris Ryan?

  And what happened when that, when you dialed it up?

• 21:18Andy Greenwald?

  Still saved on this very laptop, brother. One of these flights. Locked it in.

• 21:22Chris Ryan?

  I don't think you're gonna like Backrooms.

• 21:24Andy Greenwald?

  I downloaded two movies for my flight. Do you want to hear which ones? Backrooms, didn't watch it. My dinner with Andre.

• 21:30Chris Ryan?

  Watched it.

• 21:32Andy Greenwald?

  I watched a Norm MacDonald documentary.

• 21:34Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 21:35Andy Greenwald?

  Irrelevant.

• 21:36Chris Ryan?

  How was it?

• 21:37Andy Greenwald?

  Bad documentary, good subject.

• 21:39Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 21:39Andy Greenwald?

  Terrible documentary.

• 21:41Chris Ryan?

  Because it didn't...

• 21:41Andy Greenwald?

  Have you watched it?

• 21:42Chris Ryan?

  No, I don't watch documentaries, really.

• 21:44Andy Greenwald?

  I, I do find that like, I, I am the problem, because I do find that like, Netflix has discovered this is a, like, a, a rich vein, and I think they've contracted the Apetow Company, if not Judd Apetow himself, to provide these.

• 21:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Andy Greenwald?

  Documentaries about comedians are very, very good plain fodder, because worst case, you're getting a lot of classic comedy bits.

• 22:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you get basically a highlight reel of stand-up.

• 22:05Andy Greenwald?

  And in the absence of the Marc Maron podcast, which I miss very much, you do get to see people like Kevin Nealon being like, man, that was rough. And I love this stuff.

• 22:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:13Andy Greenwald?

  But, the framing device for this documentary about one of the funniest people ever is, everyone falls into YouTube holes of Norm MacDonald, so the framing device is like, close up on a screen, searching Norm MacDonald things?

• 22:26Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 22:26Andy Greenwald?

  And then like, surfing through clips? And I'm like, the, the last thing I want to see in a documentary is the experience of looking at my computer?

• 22:34Chris Ryan?

  That's also probably the last thing Netflix wants to see, is people using YouTube.

• 22:37Andy Greenwald?

  A hundred percent. It's very weird. And also, you have a subject who is fascinating, and who just lied about everything all the time? And it just seems, whether they didn't have access to, or they didn't have the interest in, it doesn't really poke at that?

• 22:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:49Andy Greenwald?

  It's just like, then he said this, and that wasn't true. He did go to college, and you're like, and here's footage of him in college. Okay, but he's still making jokes about Hitler's dog, and it's funny.

• 22:58Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 22:59Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean?

• 23:00Chris Ryan?

  It's always funny. Uh, so that Barker thing is up on YouTube. It's called Mama Bear. It's funny that you mentioned this experience of...

• 23:07Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, I have an obsession question.

• 23:08Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 23:09Andy Greenwald?

  Cause we're just...

• 23:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, man.

• 23:11Andy Greenwald?

  We haven't had time to talk like this.

• 23:12Chris Ryan?

  No, of course.

• 23:13Andy Greenwald?

  This is what it's really like.

• 23:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:15Andy Greenwald?

  I just wanted to know, I, I was getting some feedback from my sources, that Indy Navarrete was, she hosted SNL.

• 23:20Chris Ryan?

  She did a very, very good job.

• 23:21Andy Greenwald?

  I heard not that, I heard that was not the case. I heard it was a heat check moment for her.

• 23:25Chris Ryan?

  Who were your sources?

• 23:26Andy Greenwald?

  I can't, I can't pull my sources.

• 23:28Chris Ryan?

  Who are, your sources are your daughters?

• 23:31Andy Greenwald?

  No, I thought they would be my sources, because Gracie Abrams was the musical guest, and then I was told they don't care about that.

• 23:37Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 23:37Andy Greenwald?

  I was like, whoa, I can't keep up. So, no, but tell me, you thought she was good?

• 23:41Chris Ryan?

  Thought she was fine, yeah. I mean, I thought that, especially the digital shorts that she did were very good.

• 23:46Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 23:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:47Andy Greenwald?

  I was just concerned trolling. I'm just happy. You know how important the role of rogue is to me?

• 23:52Chris Ryan?

  She threw an inside fastball at Shane Gillis in her monologue.

• 23:56Andy Greenwald?

  How do you feel about that?

• 23:57Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's really...

• 23:59Andy Greenwald?

  You worried?

• 23:59Chris Ryan?

  A house divided.

• 24:02Andy Greenwald?

  That's true.

• 24:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Andy Greenwald?

  I gotta say, I, I don't want to blow any sources here, but when I had a, I had dinner with you and your wife, and she was heated about Shane Gillis.

• 24:10Chris Ryan?

  She was.

• 24:11Andy Greenwald?

  She, she, I mean, famously, she's, she shares her thoughts and opinions.

• 24:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't think...

• 24:17Andy Greenwald?

  She's not retiring about these things.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  The nuance of Shane's political ideals. It's a little lost. And I, I know that she doesn't listen to this podcast, so I don't have to worry.

• 24:28Andy Greenwald?

  Talking about it?

• 24:29Chris Ryan?

  I would not say that she, she sees eye to eye with Shane, but Shane's much taller than her, so she wouldn't, you know?

• 24:35Andy Greenwald?

  Also, the fact that like, he is a fan of the right sports teams doesn't really carry as much water with her, as I think it does with us.

• 24:42Chris Ryan?

  The Eagles?

• 24:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't know if it's the right one anymore.

• 24:45Andy Greenwald?

  You don't, you're switching allegiances?

• 24:47Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 24:49Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry, Curry, Curry Barker?

• 24:50Chris Ryan?

  Yada, yada. He put up a fi- I mean, he's one of the biggest film, young filmmakers in the world, and he put up a five-minute short on YouTube.

• 24:56Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it is...

• 24:57Chris Ryan?

  That's cool.

• 24:57Andy Greenwald?

  It is, we, I mean, this is largely, I see why he did this now. This is largely part of the same story, which is, it is odd that, like, like, I think it is broadly good that movies are back, in the sense that people seem to understand that like, making something special, putting it in a place where you can see it all together, is worth it?

• 25:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:15Andy Greenwald?

  So, in that sense, still being, you know, tying yourself to the old machinery of entertainment and consumption can be good, but at such a time of complete access to everyone at all times, and nimbleness inside and outside of the machinery, I think it is good when people who come from the outside, uh, like Curry Barker, or, um, what's his name, Mr. Backrooms?

• 25:38Chris Ryan?

  Kane Parsons.

• 25:38Andy Greenwald?

  Benny Backrooms?

• 25:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Andy Greenwald?

  I think he's in Griselda, actually. I, they should still... Do the sound effect. What's the Backrooms sound effect?

• 25:49Chris Ryan?

  I'm in a limbo space.

• 25:52Chris Ryan?

  I'm in an abandoned mall.

• 25:53Andy Greenwald?

  If you understand the Venn, if you are the Venn diagram of this...

• 25:57Chris Ryan?

  If you get Backrooms in Griselda, then that's funny.

• 25:58Andy Greenwald?

  You need to stand up right now, whatever you're doing. Take the money out of the till. I think that's good. That's good for the culture.

• 26:05Chris Ryan?

  Uh, one of the reasons why I think Welcome to Derry was a smart move, was on Halloween night.

• 26:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:11Chris Ryan?

  Wife and I get home, we're like, time to get scared. And I was just opening up various services, various streaming services that I, I subscribe to.

• 26:19Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 26:20Chris Ryan?

  And it was right there, and it was like, shock, drop, Welcome to Derry Halloween timed special.

• 26:27Andy Greenwald?

  On HBO Max?

• 26:28Chris Ryan?

  On HBO Max, and I was like, that's fucking smart, man.

• 26:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that was good.

• 26:31Chris Ryan?

  You know, Taylor Sheridan should drop a July 4th landman.

• 26:35Andy Greenwald?

  Oh yeah, everyone should own their holiday.

• 26:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Andy Greenwald?

  That's really smart. I think Taylor Sheridan should drop an Election Day episode. You know what I mean?

• 26:43Chris Ryan?

  Different characters of his voting.

• 26:45Andy Greenwald?

  Just different characters of his, yeah.

• 26:47Chris Ryan?

  And put the sticker on?

• 26:49Andy Greenwald?

  Just Billy Bob Thornton.

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  Do you think anybody in any Taylor Sheridan show has ever prominently displayed their I voted sticker?

• 26:55Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, great question. I think all of them have opinions about Hassan Piker.

• 26:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:59Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? Strong opinions. Halloween, I'm glad you were able to scare yourselves, because we did, you and I did speak, uh, as the sun was setting on Halloween, and you did ask me if my kids were ready for big boy Halloween.

• 27:15Andy Greenwald?

  You're like, they ready to get scared tonight? You were like, or they do amateur hour?

• 27:19Chris Ryan?

  I didn't, no, I was just, I was just curious whether or not they were, they were going out in the rain, a rainy Los Angeles.

• 27:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we went out.

• 27:25Chris Ryan?

  And then if they were like, tonight we get to watch Nightmare on Elm Street or something. Yeah.

• 27:31Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 27:31Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 27:32Andy Greenwald?

  Not at all.

• 27:34Chris Ryan?

  One thing that we did after, when we got home, we eventually watched like, some, some classic horror movies, but for a while, I was playing around with this, uh, weird site that, that I kind of came across via YouTube.

• 27:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, this is cool.

• 27:49Chris Ryan?

  Via Instagram, sorry. Called Spelunker. It's, I think it's called spelunker.tv, and it's essentially like a, um, retro cable guide? Like, the way it used to look when you would boot up your system in the, I don't know, like, 90s and...

• 28:05Andy Greenwald?

  It's S.P.E.L.U.N.K.R.T.V.

• 28:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and it basically was formatted like, an old, old cable guide or TV guide on your TV with set channels, so there's, not unlike what you would find on like, Tubi necessarily, but these channels will range from public access shows, uh, old Bob Ross, uh, episodes.

• 28:27Andy Greenwald?

  I'll name some channels. Saturday Morning, showing blocks of cartoons from like, the 80s and early 90s. Uh, Late Night Local, so local programming. Happy Trees, all Bob Ross painting. Library Card, Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow, Arthur cartoon. The one that I went right to, which is Radioactive TV, which currently is playing MTV's Dream Time from December 94, which was all the things that were on between midnight and dawn.

• 28:53Chris Ryan?

  That's fucking crazy.

• 28:54Andy Greenwald?

  And MTV 120 Minutes from the 90s. This is everything I've ever wanted.

• 28:58Chris Ryan?

  So, I just went to, they have like, three horror sci-fi channels towards the bottom there, and for a while, like...

• 29:05Andy Greenwald?

  Graveyard shift?

• 29:06Chris Ryan?

  I put on one of those channels, which was just, you know, some Vampire Hunters of Planet Z thing from the 50s? And then I threw on a John Carpenter Soundtracks playlist, and I just vibed out.

• 29:21Andy Greenwald?

  And then did you and Phoebe just slow dance? Like, like Steve Rogers and Peggy?

• 29:25Chris Ryan?

  Or chased each other around the apartment?

• 29:27Andy Greenwald?

  Either one. That's beautiful. You really set the mood. Did you change the lights up a little bit?

• 29:32Chris Ryan?

  I'm actually a huge, I like the orange glow thing. You know, have you read about how it's like, very popular now to have like, very orange light bulbs?

• 29:39Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 29:40Chris Ryan?

  Kaia?

• 29:42Andy Greenwald?

  Kaia didn't even have to speak, she just nodded.

• 29:44Chris Ryan?

  She knew, she knew. It's, it's an aesthetic choice.

• 29:46Speaker 05

  Nick was trying to sell me last night on this, like, they're like, a hundred and sixty dollar for four lamps, and they like, change with the like, so they go into like, sunset mode.

• 29:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 05

  And I was like, that feels like a lot for lamps.

• 30:00Chris Ryan?

  I highly recommend anybody who's like, um, streamered out, I can't decide what to watch. This is an incredibly fun vibe, because a lot of this is pulled from our, sort of, either what we were watching on reruns?

• 30:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 30:17Chris Ryan?

  Or what was on at the time for us when we were younger.

• 30:19Andy Greenwald?

  But the time part is really important. I think this is what's really hard to communicate, and what I do miss, was, there was a sense of...

• 30:29Andy Greenwald?

  We had clocks. Look, it wasn't the Dark Ages. But you always had in the back of your mind a sense of what was on television at the different times of the day.

• 30:38Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 30:38Andy Greenwald?

  And this obviously came in, this is a really big deal when you were homesick, because if you could make it through-

• 30:44Chris Ryan?

  I was never sick.

• 30:45Andy Greenwald?

  The more-

• 30:46Chris Ryan?

  It's always, I was already, always ready to play. Like Saquon.

• 30:49Andy Greenwald?

  He didn't call it Huberman's Chili.

• 30:50Chris Ryan?

  I never sat down like Saquon.

• 30:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you were always on a bike saying, "I'm smart. I'm smart." Had that go over in class. It's cool. So if you got through the gauntlet of soap operas in the morning-

• 31:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:04Andy Greenwald?

  Then you could make it to game shows, which was great. And then in the early afternoon is when you might get a surprise, like, um, movie channel heater. You know, you might suddenly get like, you know, you know what movie was on every day at 1:00 PM, I think, between the years 1986 and 1996?

• 31:21Chris Ryan?

  What?

• 31:21Andy Greenwald?

  Was the Tom Hanks, Jackie Gleason movie, Nothing in Common?

• 31:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I know that one.

• 31:26Andy Greenwald?

  There's some pretty ladies in that one, I believe.

• 31:28Chris Ryan?

  Were you?

• 31:28Andy Greenwald?

  But then later, then after school, you would get like, you'd get the old sitcoms. But then as we, as we grew older, you'd get home in time for like, the Rich Eyes and Stuart Scott Sports Center. And then you could kind of coast from there into maybe MTV had something good, or maybe there'd be a surprise. I don't know.

• 31:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I would just use TV as like, the nightlight that people use their phones for now. I would just throw it on, especially once I moved out of the house. It was just like, when I would get in-

• 31:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 31:52Chris Ryan?

  -to my apartment, I would throw on the TV and it would just be ESPN, or Fox Soccer Channel, or MTV all day.

• 31:59Andy Greenwald?

  And look at you. Successful.

• 32:00Chris Ryan?

  We built this country on, on guys like me, you know?

• 32:03Andy Greenwald?

  And Shane Gillis, yeah.

• 32:04Chris Ryan?

  Did you feel like you were easy, like, were your parents pretty like, "Oh, you're not feeling well? You can stay home."

• 32:09Andy Greenwald?

  Um-

• 32:09Chris Ryan?

  Or were they like, "Nope. Get, get dressed."

• 32:12Andy Greenwald?

  I, I've never heard my parents use that tone, no.

• 32:15Chris Ryan?

  (laughing)

• 32:16Andy Greenwald?

  No. They're, well, no, I mean, the, the thing is, is that, the difference was, when you were a kid, you couldn't stay home alone. Um, so often I would have to go to work with my mother, who was a teacher, which in retrospect is insane, because I was shit, actively shedding virus of whatever-

• 32:35Chris Ryan?

  Shedding V, that's right.

• 32:36Andy Greenwald?

  -the type was at the time. But like, hanging out in the faculty lounge of the school where she taught.

• 32:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:40Andy Greenwald?

  Um, but then later, the real breakthrough is when you could stay home alone. And then I remember wonderful things, like, like, "Oh, I, I remember seeing the Oasis video for Supersonic, like, 1:00 PM."

• 32:51Chris Ryan?

  Changed your life.

• 32:52Andy Greenwald?

  It changed my life. Um, what about you? Your, what, your parents tough on you about that?

• 32:57Chris Ryan?

  I just don't remember getting a lot of sick days. Like, it would have to be, I'd have to be like, really spiking a fever.

• 33:02Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 33:03Chris Ryan?

  Like, dudes were just always sniffling in my, my school, you know what I mean?

• 33:06Andy Greenwald?

  Because they were cocaine addicts? What do you mean?

• 33:08Chris Ryan?

  No, it's just like, it's like, everybody had a cold in Philadelphia for 20 years.

• 33:11Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, that's still what the East Coast is. There is, when people talk about like, the sound of London, it's people with lurgy on the tube.

• 33:21Chris Ryan?

  That's just, that's also because they like, smoke watermelon vapes all day long.

• 33:25Andy Greenwald?

  They do.

• 33:26Chris Ryan?

  They do. It's beautiful. I want to tell you a little bit about, um, the show that I'm probably most excited for, for the rest of my professional life.

• 33:35Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, wow, okay.

• 33:36Chris Ryan?

  NBC has ordered a gender-swapped, uh, procedural version of The Great Gatsby.

• 33:41Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah. About time.

• 33:43Chris Ryan?

  This is from Deadline. "A modern-day police procedural about Detective Jay Gatsby, a devilishly charming investigator with a con man's gift for reading human behavior, and a decorated New York State Police Detective named Nicole Nicky Carraway, who was born to be a cop, but dreams of becoming a writer."

• 34:01Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry.

• 34:04Chris Ryan?

  And I didn't know, like, do you know, is Great Gatsby like, now, uh-

• 34:08Andy Greenwald?

  Public domain?

• 34:09Chris Ryan?

  Public domain.

• 34:10Andy Greenwald?

  What gave you that idea?

• 34:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. So, do you have to go 100 years since this publication to do that, or what happens?

• 34:16Andy Greenwald?

  I believe it was 75, and then there was a lot of Mickey Mouse litigation, literally.

• 34:20Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 34:20Andy Greenwald?

  Because they didn't want to lose the rights to their signature character.

• 34:23Chris Ryan?

  They didn't want Mickey Mouse showing up in places she shouldn't. Like, in the backrooms.

• 34:28Andy Greenwald?

  In the backrooms.

• 34:29Chris Ryan?

  Get in the backrooms and Goofy's there.

• 34:31Andy Greenwald?

  That would be terrifying.

• 34:33Chris Ryan?

  I hate that.

• 34:34Andy Greenwald?

  Um, yes. So, this is fun in public domain theater.

• 34:37Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:38Andy Greenwald?

  I think this is hilarious.

• 34:40Chris Ryan?

  It's really funny. Honestly, I applaud NBC.

• 34:42Andy Greenwald?

  This is, what's incredible about this, is, this is kind of like, a punchline to a joke about what made CBS the absolutely dominant number one network for 20 years, because there was no public domain idea that couldn't be turned into a weekly procedural.

• 35:00Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:00Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I mean, we, we had the, there are many iterations of Sherlock Holmes, there's, there's Watson, there's, this is just what they do, is anything can be a procedural. Um, I think there's been like, Einstein procedurals, or like, this is what they do. The fact that they've taken The Great Gatsby and been like, "This too can be a police procedural." I mean, respect, like, not even, not even The Great Les Moonves, you know?

• 35:26Chris Ryan?

  I was half convinced that this was a viral marketing plan for a 30 Rock reboot.

• 35:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, this is a real Jenna shit.

• 35:33Chris Ryan?

  But I also am somewhat intrigued by taking-

• 35:37Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:38Chris Ryan?

  -early 20th century American literary classics and dick wolfing them.

• 35:42Andy Greenwald?

  Why does it have to be American? Like, don't you think there's a great medical procedural in The Magic Mountain?

• 35:48Chris Ryan?

  No, it really is.

• 35:50Andy Greenwald?

  Where like, there's a-

• 35:52Chris Ryan?

  I know you're just trying to say that you've read Magic Mountain.

• 35:56Andy Greenwald?

  Who ha, you haven't? Oh, I'm sorry, you haven't read Thomas Mann's-

• 36:00Chris Ryan?

  Tom, Tom Mann's back in the news, though. Because that movie, Fatherland, is kind of about him, right?

• 36:03Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't know that.

• 36:04Chris Ryan?

  Or the Manns. Isn't he? Yeah.

• 36:06Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think Michael Mann and Thomas Mann have a deep connection?

• 36:09Chris Ryan?

  I think they both care about gun safety.

• 36:11Andy Greenwald?

  They probably do. I, I-

• 36:13Chris Ryan?

  And that gun safety starts with knowing how to use a gun.

• 36:16Andy Greenwald?

  What, and not discharging it into your own-

• 36:19Chris Ryan?

  It was holstered. It was holstered.

• 36:21Andy Greenwald?

  No, he was holstering it.

• 36:22Chris Ryan?

  I think it was holstered.

• 36:24Andy Greenwald?

  And then what?

• 36:24Chris Ryan?

  And then it went off accidentally.

• 36:27Andy Greenwald?

  Accidentally because he pulled the trigger?

• 36:28Chris Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 36:29Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think, I, I don't think-

• 36:31Chris Ryan?

  Don't make me laugh, because like, I don't, I just want him to be okay.

• 36:34Andy Greenwald?

  We all want that.

• 36:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Andy Greenwald?

  But I think you're doing a little bit of tidying up here. You know what I mean?

• 36:40Chris Ryan?

  Tide pending it.

• 36:41Andy Greenwald?

  Just, yeah. What other works of the American canon? Like, East of Eden, for example, you could do it the way Zoe Kazan did it. Sure.

• 36:54Chris Ryan?

  What if Tom Joad solving crimes on the Dust Bowl, Dust Bowl Road?

• 36:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that's fine.

• 36:59Chris Ryan?

  Detective Joad?

• 37:00Andy Greenwald?

  The sad truth is, you say the word detective in almost any capacity, I'm like, "This is interesting."

• 37:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:08Andy Greenwald?

  This is interesting. It's just, it's just, I mean, I guess we're just cooked. Right? Like, I guess that's what we're doing.

• 37:16Chris Ryan?

  We're beyond cooked, brother. We're, we're like, freeze-dried astronaut food right now.

• 37:19Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:20Chris Ryan?

  But we're, that's all, that's okay. You know?

• 37:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:22Chris Ryan?

  The astronauts got to go to space.

• 37:24Andy Greenwald?

  Did you mention, you mentioned that, that Nicky Carraway is gender-swapped, right?

• 37:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:27Andy Greenwald?

  That's pretty-

• 37:28Chris Ryan?

  I think that's pretty brave.

• 37:29Andy Greenwald?

  That's pretty forward-thinking.

• 37:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's very brave.

• 37:31Chris Ryan?

  But isn't there also, I, I don't know how Daisy fits in here.

• 37:34Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, but I bet the real heads will check for it.

• 37:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:37Andy Greenwald?

  You know? Do you think, do you think, could we, could we workshop a larger F. Scott Fitzgerald verse? Like, do you think Tender is the Night, like, Detective Dick Diver?

• 37:50Chris Ryan?

  Is that the one at Princeton?

• 37:51Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, they're all, no, that, that's Beautiful in the Damned? No, Tender is the Night is in, is in-

• 37:56Chris Ryan?

  That's the married couple who are like, always fighting?

• 37:59Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:59Chris Ryan?

  Right? I, I mean, I remember loving those when I read them, yeah.

• 38:02Andy Greenwald?

  But so, in that, they are kind of a squabbling, married couple of detectives, like, like, Heart, what was it called? Heart, Heart and Heart? Remember that show that was on ABC? It's like that.

• 38:16Chris Ryan?

  Moonlighting?

• 38:16Andy Greenwald?

  It's like Moonlighting, but they're in France, and they drink a little bit, they're investigating some-

• 38:21Chris Ryan?

  Parisian crimes?

• 38:22Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like we gotta re, we gotta, we gotta move that, we gotta domesticate that.

• 38:25Chris Ryan?

  To, to bring, bring Tender is the Night back, back to the Chicago PD area.

• 38:30Andy Greenwald?

  Back to the larger Chicago verse.

• 38:33Speaker 06

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• 39:32Speaker 01

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• 39:39Andy Greenwald?

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• 40:32Chris Ryan?

  Would you like to hear about some of the rest of the shows that are coming out this year? As obvious, made obvious by the rest of this podcast, we've kind of skipped over a bunch of stuff.

• 40:42Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think?

• 40:42Chris Ryan?

  Well, there's a lot of stuff that's on right now. I mean, Joe and I talked about Carrie and Crystal Lake. I didn't really ever get into War, the show on HBO currently. Gilded Age came back last night.

• 40:54Andy Greenwald?

  Big cameos in it, people are talking.

• 40:55Chris Ryan?

  Cameos, Letterman and Damon walking out of George Russell's house. I love Gilded Age. I just, I think I hit a time spent limit with it.

• 41:05Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want to talk about Reggie Dinkins briefly? Because that's back.

• 41:08Chris Ryan?

  It is back.

• 41:08Andy Greenwald?

  It's back today, right?

• 41:09Chris Ryan?

  It's back tonight. We don't have to get, I mean, I don't think you can really spoil Reggie Dinkins. It's, he's still Reggie Dinkins and Daniel Reichleff's still living in his house, making a documentary about him. Here's my one note about the one episode of season two that I watched.

• 41:25Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 41:25Chris Ryan?

  I'm worried it was made only for us.

• 41:27Andy Greenwald?

  It's so good.

• 41:28Chris Ryan?

  The niche jokes in this, there is a Pablo Torre joke in the first episode.

• 41:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 41:33Chris Ryan?

  And I'm, I'm just like, you guys have to have a bigger tent if you want to stay up on Jay Gatsby's NBC.

• 41:41Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think, not to get too inside baseball, but do you think, do you think Pablo took our advice? When we spoke to him and asked him to just like-

• 41:49Chris Ryan?

  To lay off the Sixers?

• 41:50Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think he's gonna listen to us?

• 41:51Chris Ryan?

  I'm pretty certain the Sixers are gonna be too big, too big to fail.

• 41:55Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think?

• 41:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:56Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think they are?

• 41:57Chris Ryan?

  He, don't say that.

• 41:58Andy Greenwald?

  You know, it changed my opinion. Hear us say that.

• 42:00Chris Ryan?

  It changed my, like, last night when we were watching Eagles, not together, but virtually together.

• 42:04Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 42:04Chris Ryan?

  And the camera cut to Josh Harris.

• 42:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 42:07Chris Ryan?

  Who's had some ups and downs in the news over the years.

• 42:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 42:10Chris Ryan?

  I was like-

• 42:11Andy Greenwald?

  This is the owner of the commanders.

• 42:12Chris Ryan?

  That's my quarterback of my, of my life, right there. Like, let's go. Now I do.

• 42:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I do too.

• 42:19Chris Ryan?

  Now I do.

• 42:21Andy Greenwald?

  Tonight's premiere of Reggie Dinkins is pure joy. It is so funny. And the cutaways, like, no one does this better than Robert Karlock and his merry band of pranksters. But like, there's a cutaway to Reggie Dinkins hosting Saturday Night Live, I guess in an alternate universe.

• 42:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 42:38Andy Greenwald?

  Where Tracy Morgan does not exist. It is quite funny. There's cutaways to his Kwanzaa album.

• 42:43Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 42:43Andy Greenwald?

  Which I believe I found, I think I violated the NDA by filming that joke in my apartment in New York and sending it to you just to tell you that we were back.

• 42:51Chris Ryan?

  You've been getting into doing that.

• 42:53Andy Greenwald?

  I just want you to know where I'm at.

• 42:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:55Andy Greenwald?

  You know, audio visual cues. The show is amazing and I gotta say, like, no one does it as well as they do. But it did make me yearn for, not to make this entire podcast nostalgic, but like, an era of comedies that really were comedy forward. I think that we've done, we've, we collectively, our culture has done great work with the half hour space and serializing it and finding ways to tell different types of stories in it. We were talking about Widows Bay. We didn't talk about it, but Kaya's colleague, Amy Poehler, has a new show coming out called Dig.

• 43:32Chris Ryan?

  I have that in my notes to discuss.

• 43:34Andy Greenwald?

  And we'll talk about it and the trailer looks promising, but again, it also seems highly serialized. Like, this is a show about people doing something in pursuit of something larger than cutaway jokes and comedy. And Reggie Dinkins is so pure, man. It's just funny. It's just funny, you know?

• 43:50Chris Ryan?

  I just, my life is always greatly improved by having something like this on.

• 43:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Chris Ryan?

  I was marginally improved, you know, like-

• 43:58Andy Greenwald?

  My life has been improved since the show came back.

• 44:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so excited for everybody to watch Reggie Dinkins and please do watch because we love that show. And it sounds like it is like a bit of a bubble show, you know, when I was surprised it came back, honestly.

• 44:10Andy Greenwald?

  Were you?

• 44:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, a little bit. Were you?

• 44:14Andy Greenwald?

  No, but I, but the numbers are totally opaque. I mean, this is, this is a show that is, so, The Paper, which we didn't really cover, but I did watch the whole second season, is a Peacock original.

• 44:26Chris Ryan?

  That then goes to NBC.

• 44:27Andy Greenwald?

  That they have, for the second season, they aired on NBC.

• 44:30Chris Ryan?

  Like concurrent or parallel to it or?

• 44:32Andy Greenwald?

  I think, I think there was significant overlap. It was a very small window in which they did that.

• 44:37Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 44:38Andy Greenwald?

  Dinkins is an NBC original, so it's getting a lot of, like, during the football game that we may or may not continue to talk about. Like, they are, they are advertising it a lot on their broadcast, but I would imagine most people that are listening to us will check it out, the episodes, when they hit Peacock after it airs. So I don't understand what they're doing and I don't understand what the revenue stream for it is, if it has a larger budget because it's on NBC or not, or a longer leash or a shorter leash. But I don't think it should matter. They're making something really good.

• 45:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I still think that there is like, whether it's just because I, I associate the opening NBC logo chime with good comedy. I still think they are making some good comedies over there and I'd love for them to continue to do this one specifically and The Paper and, and-

• 45:26Andy Greenwald?

  But do you watch the other ones? I feel like they have other shows. There's like a St. Dennis Medical. I've never seen that.

• 45:31Chris Ryan?

  I watched like the first season of that on and off, yeah.

• 45:33Andy Greenwald?

  Is it pleasant?

• 45:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 45:34Andy Greenwald?

  Does it fill the superstore sized hole in your heart? Because that's one of your secret ones. You watch that show.

• 45:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you know what it is? It's just like, in, like, sometimes it'll just be like, like, we'll get to a day and we're just like, there's nothing really to watch, you know, and I don't feel like, you know, watching a Yakuza movie. This, this, this kind of fits right in there.

• 45:54Andy Greenwald?

  Totally, totally.

• 45:56Chris Ryan?

  Here's the rest of the year so far.

• 45:58Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 45:58Chris Ryan?

  Not so far. This is the rest of the year.

• 46:00Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 46:00Chris Ryan?

  The next two big ones, Black Doves comes back on Thursday.

• 46:04Andy Greenwald?

  So exciting.

• 46:05Chris Ryan?

  Joe Barton's morbidly funny, awesome, like, Wikian assassin show starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw. And I believe like Sam Riley is joining the cast this year. I'm not sure who else, but-

• 46:20Andy Greenwald?

  Our Man from Alien, whose name I'm gonna blank on, Our Man from Alien Earth.

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  The one who's also-

• 46:26Andy Greenwald?

  Obuse Cissé is on the show this year.

• 46:28Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. This, I'm really excited to have this back. I, I think there's an embargo on thoughts and opinions about it. I'm enthusiastic.

• 46:38Andy Greenwald?

  I'm very enthusiastic and I also just, you know, want to say that like, you know, Joe and I are both longtime fans of Tottenham Hotspur. So I feel like there's a sense of like a mordently funny, like a little bit self-lacerating, but like ultimately hopeful.

• 46:50Chris Ryan?

  If somebody's just listening to this podcast for the first time, they're gonna think you're telling the truth.

• 46:54Andy Greenwald?

  I always want them to think I'm telling the truth. I learned that from the Norm MacDonald documentary I watched on an airplane on Friday. It's very successful strategy.

• 47:03Chris Ryan?

  Black Doves is, is an awesome show. I'm excited to talk, hopefully to Joe about it with you sometime in the next couple of weeks because-

• 47:10Andy Greenwald?

  Because Liverpool down bad right now.

• 47:12Chris Ryan?

  Liverpool's fine.

• 47:13Andy Greenwald?

  You think?

• 47:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Do you know how to read the table of the Premier League standings?

• 47:16Andy Greenwald?

  I just feel like that was a tough loss this weekend.

• 47:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, the refs are corrupt. They definitely are. His next fucking jersey got yanked.

• 47:26Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 47:26Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Blue Lights.

• 47:28Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's the angriest you've ever been on this podcast.

• 47:30Chris Ryan?

  Because I'll entertain this, like, I love Spurs. I've been down with Spurs for a long time, like, I love to humor you.

• 47:36Andy Greenwald?

  How many matches have there been this season?

• 47:39Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, like, nine, 10?

• 47:42Andy Greenwald?

  I've watched them.

• 47:42Chris Ryan?

  Okay, okay. Blue Lights is coming back for its fourth season on BritBox. I really love this show. It's probably one of the best, most well-done cop shows on TV right now.

• 47:54Andy Greenwald?

  How many seasons have aired and how many episodes per season? What are we, what are we looking at for Blue Lights?

• 47:59Chris Ryan?

  I think it's six episodes per season and this is the fourth season.

• 48:02Andy Greenwald?

  Solid.

• 48:03Chris Ryan?

  They are a full hour, but you can get there in pretty fast and they, a lot of people have BritBox add-ons with their Amazon Prime. Speaking of Amazon Prime, their big show down the stretch here is Rings of Power, which we, we kind of tapped out on during season one, but sounds like Sauron is really working the magic. I think he gets the ring here.

• 48:22Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 48:23Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think he made the ring, right?

• 48:25Andy Greenwald?

  Well, yes.

• 48:27Chris Ryan?

  You're not a J R R T guy, are you?

• 48:28Andy Greenwald?

  I like Turtle Gods.

• 48:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:30Andy Greenwald?

  I don't, no, did you read?

• 48:33Chris Ryan?

  I never, I read Fellowship, I think. Yeah, I read Fellowship of the Ring a long time ago, like in high school or something. And then, I love the movies.

• 48:41Andy Greenwald?

  I'm Tolkien ignorant.

• 48:42Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 48:43Andy Greenwald?

  Blind spot.

• 48:44Chris Ryan?

  The Altruists is the Sam Bankman-Fried show on Netflix, in which I mean, it's a show about the FTX collapse, starring Julia Garner and-

• 48:57Andy Greenwald?

  And isn't this Our Man from Say Nothing?

• 49:00Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, Anthony Boyle. That's right. This is coming out at a time where I think, on one hand, you could say these kinds of tech finance collapses are very much in the news and very much in the zeitgeist with, you can see everything and with artificial getting such good reviews and possibly being an Oscar contender.

• 49:22Chris Ryan?

  I was curious about, is this the kind of, like, do you like watching shows about, like, watching stories about these people, fictionalized or otherwise?

• 49:31Andy Greenwald?

  Um, historically, no.

• 49:33Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 49:33Andy Greenwald?

  But I'm interested in, I'm pretty ignorant of this, I don't know the details of this case. I did not read the Michael Lewis book. I don't really, wasn't really paying attention to it. Um, I like Julie Garner, and I liked the trailer for the show a lot, in the sense that it seemed to have a very specific point of view and aesthetic decision-making behind it. So I'm, I want to give this one a chance.

• 49:55Chris Ryan?

  Secret Service is one that I just came across.

• 49:57Andy Greenwald?

  I just got an email about this.

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, where, it's on MGM Plus. There's funny, it's James Ponte Ozzick wrote a New York Times article today about the American Hostage Show, the, the-

• 50:08Andy Greenwald?

  With Jon Hamm.

• 50:08Chris Ryan?

  Hamm and Rebisi Show.

• 50:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:09Chris Ryan?

  And he, but the thrust of it was, this is pretty good, but I can't in good conscience tell you to subscribe to another service-

• 50:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:18Chris Ryan?

  -just to watch it. And about the kind of, I just, the, the creep of, if you have, like, Shudder and Crunchyroll-

• 50:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Chris Ryan?

  -and Paramount and HBO Max and Netflix and Disney and, and all of these things, the enormous bill that you're paying if you don't want to watch ads as well. Uh, and even sometimes if you do watch ads, like, it still piles up. And these shows that are specifically on, like, MGM Plus and Epix and Starz and these kinds of things, I think are, sometimes fall a little by the wayside because of it. But this is a, uh, Jemma Artiton and Rafe Spall-

• 50:56Andy Greenwald?

  Love Rafe.

• 50:57Chris Ryan?

  -British political conspiracy thriller about, uh, an MI6 agent who learns that a British politician might be a Russian asset, which is my shit.

• 51:04Andy Greenwald?

  Did he read the Patrick Redden Keefe book? Because I feel like-

• 51:07Chris Ryan?

  The answer's yes.

• 51:08Andy Greenwald?

  The answer's probably yes.

• 51:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Andy Greenwald?

  Did you, have you watched the Hostage Show? The-

• 51:12Chris Ryan?

  I haven't.

• 51:13Andy Greenwald?

  I gotta be honest with you. I thought I was gonna be providing some real boots-on-the-ground journalism. I thought that I was, like, you know, doing our fabled, we love to talk about New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman's columns, where he takes a taxi ride in Karachi.

• 51:25Chris Ryan?

  I believe this is the second or third time he's come up on this pod in the last two weeks.

• 51:28Andy Greenwald?

  I love it. Well, we're all looking at the news these days, and we're looking for Tom to let us know what's going on. But I thought I was gonna have some real insight to you, because I was on the plane and I saw someone fire up what I believed to be-

• 51:40Chris Ryan?

  American Hostage.

• 51:41Andy Greenwald?

  -American Hostage, like, instantly. Like, as soon as we sat down, and was, like, really riveted. And then I realized he was just watching The Town.

• 51:48Chris Ryan?

  Do you ever feel like when you're on a plane and you're watching someone just grind tape, you're like, I wish it could be so simple for me? I wish it didn't go into it with-

• 51:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 51:55Chris Ryan?

  -somebody Pryor's, you know?

• 51:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 51:56Chris Ryan?

  And I could just do Ted Lasso, season four?

• 51:58Andy Greenwald?

  Well, like, on this flight, the woman next to me did something that I really admired, that she found a show that they had multiple episodes of. And I have no idea what it was, it seemed to be like a, uh, like a high school football show, but it wasn't Friday Night Lights. I was completely unfamiliar with this show, but they seemed to have unlimited episodes of it available on Delta. And she fired up the show and then went about her life. She did work emails, she looked at some spreadsheets, I believe she napped for a while. And the entire flight, it was just-

• 52:28Chris Ryan?

  She just had the season going.

• 52:29Andy Greenwald?

  It was just going.

• 52:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:30Andy Greenwald?

  That's the visionary. That's the kind of offense I need to be running. You know what I mean? The spread offense.

• 52:37Chris Ryan?

  That's the McVeigh tree.

• 52:38Andy Greenwald?

  Where you're just watching everything all the time, a little bit.

• 52:41Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Dig is coming on Peacock. Uh, obviously Amy Poehler's first sitcom, or, or show, really, since Parks.

• 52:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 52:49Chris Ryan?

  Is that right?

• 52:50Andy Greenwald?

  That's right.

• 52:51Chris Ryan?

  Um, and-

• 52:52Andy Greenwald?

  Hugh Laurie.

• 52:52Chris Ryan?

  This looks delightful. This is, obviously, we have a lot of affection for Amy's work, both on screen and on mic here, but I think that this looks like a delightful show. It's about, uh, an archaeological dig in-

• 53:06Andy Greenwald?

  Greece.

• 53:07Chris Ryan?

  Greece, and-

• 53:08Andy Greenwald?

  I think our favorite Greek-American, Jason Manzoukas, appears on it.

• 53:11Chris Ryan?

  And it's just a really, like, good idea for a setting for this kind of, like, heartfelt comedy that Amy's-

• 53:16Andy Greenwald?

  What's Mike Schur?

• 53:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. So, so excellent. Yeah, I'm like, sure.

• 53:19Andy Greenwald?

  Kai, you wanna weigh in on this? Any dig thoughts?

• 53:22Speaker 05

  I'm very excited.

• 53:23Andy Greenwald?

  Are you, are you, how deep are you in the dig-verse? Have you already watched the whole season? Are you, do you make a cameo?

• 53:28Speaker 05

  No, I'm a woman of the people. I'll see it same time as everybody else.

• 53:32Andy Greenwald?

  That's beautiful. It hasn't, you haven't changed.

• 53:35Chris Ryan?

  The, a couple of other things that are worth keeping an eye on, Blade Runner 2099?

• 53:40Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:41Chris Ryan?

  Is that going in your Tolkien bag of not, I don't engage with the wider Blade Runner universe?

• 53:45Andy Greenwald?

  I think, no. I'm, how do you feel about this? Like, I think that it should be okay to cap things. Meaning, like, I would, I think it's, I think it should be normalized to be a fan of something and then be able to, like, tap out.

• 54:03Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:03Andy Greenwald?

  And be like, you know what?

• 54:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Andy Greenwald?

  For me, Blade Runner ended with Ryan Gosling.

• 54:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. For me, The Great Gatsby is just sort of, last page, that's it. You know?

• 54:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, there was no expanded-

• 54:16Chris Ryan?

  So for you, it ended in 2049.

• 54:17Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's a good run of time. Now, there are people coming up behind us, the younger generation, Gen Z, and their time window on this earth amongst replicants is, maybe stretches longer than ours.

• 54:28Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 54:28Andy Greenwald?

  It's time to cede it to the next generation.

• 54:30Chris Ryan?

  Well, uh, Hunter Schafer's in this one with Michelle Yeoh, and I am very curious about it. I am, I'm pretty fired up about, like, that Blade Runner world. I think, I'm curious to see how they render the world and the cityscape in a TV setting, and whether or not it feels a little dire-

• 54:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Chris Ryan?

  -when the movie's, you're kind of like in a finite space of them.

• 54:52Andy Greenwald?

  Well, we talked about this, I think, when the trailer dropped. And I, I don't have any inside knowledge here, but I did, my spider sense went up off a little bit when I think Amazon presented it as a, like, event, limited event, when I don't believe that was how it was initially, uh-

• 55:07Chris Ryan?

  Right. They were like, maybe this could be an ongoing series.

• 55:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. No, I respect it if they were like, Silka Louisa and her team have told a wonderful finite story, and it's just another chapter in it, and we'll do a Blade Runner 2117 or something, I don't know, at some point.

• 55:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:21Andy Greenwald?

  Um, but we'll see.

• 55:23Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Frisco King, which I just wanted to mention, it's a Paramount Plus show.

• 55:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 55:29Chris Ryan?

  It's Samuel L. Jackson, which I think deserves some attention in the first place. And this was, I thought, going to be a Taylor Sheridan in-name-only production.

• 55:40Andy Greenwald?

  No, brother.

• 55:40Chris Ryan?

  Somebody else is gonna handle the writing and the executive producing of it, much like, say, Dutton Ranch or something like that. Um, or later period, Mayor of Kingstown. Taylor Sheridan wrote all of these episodes.

• 55:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, he did.

• 55:52Chris Ryan?

  Of what is being described as a crime comedy spinoff of Tulsa King, which Taylor Sheridan never really worked on very much, except for the pilot episode.

• 55:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 55:59Chris Ryan?

  That was legendarily, him and Terrence Winter were gonna do Tulsa King, and then I think it just got lost in the, the Sylvester Stallone washer dryer system. So I don't know what to expect from this, but it feels like it could be totally very different for Sheridan.

• 56:16Andy Greenwald?

  I'm very interested in this for a number of reasons. One, Sam Jackson's doing a TV show.

• 56:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Andy Greenwald?

  I do love a crime comedy.

• 56:21Chris Ryan?

  It's set in Dallas. We're big fans.

• 56:23Andy Greenwald?

  I have love, I mean, this weekend was all right.

• 56:26Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:27Andy Greenwald?

  I love, um, the Tulsa King universe. And much like Turi Barker with obsession, I wanna know where else this story can go.

• 56:35Chris Ryan?

  Where else is there hidden royalty?

• 56:37Andy Greenwald?

  I know. It's very exciting. But it is also very, one of the reasons why I think you, and you're very attuned to, to what Taylor Sheridan is up to day to day.

• 56:46Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:47Andy Greenwald?

  The story of this show is that a writer named David Erickson was announced as the writer and showrunner in June 2025, and in July it was announced that he had left the series due to scheduling conflicts, and Taylor Sheridan would write the whole thing.

• 56:58Chris Ryan?

  It was also supposed to be called NOLA King.

• 57:00Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 57:00Chris Ryan?

  And they moved it to North Texas. They moved it to Frisco. So-

• 57:03Andy Greenwald?

  Interesting. Well, I, I am, I am interested in this shadow universe that Taylor Sheridan has created that may outlive his connection to Paramount.

• 57:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:12Andy Greenwald?

  And I, I, I do not mean this in any disparaging way, because the larger Frisco King production could be incredible, and it could be, like, star-studded with, like, unknown hits.

• 57:23Chris Ryan?

  It's not. I've never heard of-

• 57:24Andy Greenwald?

  That was my point.

• 57:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:25Andy Greenwald?

  I'm looking at the cast, and I've, this is no disrespect, because I barely, I mean, I don't know anything.

• 57:31Chris Ryan?

  The TV is supposed to do this. Yeah.

• 57:32Andy Greenwald?

  But I've never heard of anyone else on the show.

• 57:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Andy Greenwald?

  And I kind of think that's incredible.

• 57:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Andy Greenwald?

  With Sam Jackson, I mean, I think someone should do, and I don't think anyone will, because everyone's quiet about these things, but like, you know how at the end of the year Hollywood Reporter does the Actors Roundtable?

• 57:46Chris Ryan?

  Uh-huh.

• 57:46Andy Greenwald?

  And they bring, like, all the contenders for the Oscars together, and it's usually, like, Lacey Rose, like, does a little roundtable or whatever. I would love an end-of-the-year Actors Roundtable of the septuagenarians who have agreed to make money on Taylor Sheridan shows.

• 58:00Chris Ryan?

  Oh, like Helen Mirren.

• 58:01Andy Greenwald?

  Helen Mirren, Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman, Sam Jackson, Sylvester Stallone.

• 58:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Andy Greenwald?

  Talk to me, and, and you got the check and you said, what?

• 58:12Chris Ryan?

  So you want it to be Charlie Rose, not Lacey Rose?

• 58:13Andy Greenwald?

  I want it to be you. Well, okay, I want a Rose doing the interviewing.

• 58:18Chris Ryan?

  Right, okay.

• 58:19Andy Greenwald?

  Right?

• 58:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Andy Greenwald?

  Wouldn't that be fascinating? Like, of all the things of going on in the business right now, like, I think that would be really interesting.

• 58:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:25Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think they talk to each other?

• 58:26Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I'm sure they're like, what's it like?

• 58:29Andy Greenwald?

  Right?

• 58:30Chris Ryan?

  Now, they all come out and say, like, Taylor Sheridan made me live in a cabin and stuff like that.

• 58:34Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 58:35Chris Ryan?

  Like, I don't know how true that stuff is, but obviously, like, Helen Mirren just, you know, does TV now.

• 58:40Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, and also, people seem to like making these shows.

• 58:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:43Andy Greenwald?

  This is not just us trying to, like, look for dirt here. I just find it really fascinating, the sort of, the whisper network of, like, older, famous people being like, this is a pretty sick gig that's available to us.

• 58:54Chris Ryan?

  The last big show that we should mention is just HP Sauce, man. The Big Wizard. Harry Potter coming on HBO. Um-

• 59:03Andy Greenwald?

  Christmas Day. Did you know that?

• 59:05Chris Ryan?

  I did know that. Yeah. Uh, aren't the Eagles playing on Christmas Day?

• 59:08Andy Greenwald?

  Who?

• 59:11Andy Greenwald?

  I'm only interested in flying owls on Christmas Day, my brother.

• 59:16Andy Greenwald?

  That's all I'm doing. I, honestly, this is, the Eagles being what they are is good for the Potter numbers in the, you know, in the tri-state area, I think.

• 59:24Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 59:25Andy Greenwald?

  More people will be tuning in. Should we do a heat check on, like, what's your, what's your, what's your interest level here? Let's be honest. Like, what can we do?

• 59:35Chris Ryan?

  If you were not involved at all?

• 59:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 59:38Chris Ryan?

  I would probably not engage with it at all, but, you know, just out of, like, I've never, I've never really engaged with Harry Potter.

• 59:45Andy Greenwald?

  But are you gonna lean in and look for all the little Easter eggs I sprinkled into all the episodes?

• 59:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, just when, when something is, like, named The Wizard of Aramigo. Yeah.

• 59:54Andy Greenwald?

  Just all the things I did. I just like, yeah, love the little, like, I tried to steer it more in the direction of, like, a private eye show.

• 1:00:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Andy Greenwald?

  You know? Set in the 90s?

• 1:00:05Chris Ryan?

  A little wizard who goes to used record stores.

• 1:00:09Andy Greenwald?

  I did what I could.

• 1:00:10Chris Ryan?

  Songs and scribes.

• 1:00:10Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's like, instead of going to King's Cross Station, they go to, like, Honest John's Records in Portobello Road. Do you know what I mean? Uh, I'm, I'm very excited for people to see the show. It's been very fun to work on.

• 1:00:21Chris Ryan?

  Thanks for coming by today.

• 1:00:23Andy Greenwald?

  This is fucking-

• 1:00:24Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm saying, thanks for coming by today.

• 1:00:26Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, theoretically, this is my job.

• 1:00:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, theoretically. Theoretically.

• 1:00:34Chris Ryan?

  No, I really, I always love doing this with you in person, man.

• 1:00:39Andy Greenwald?

  I want to remind you, you know, what, where the magic is.

• 1:00:42Chris Ryan?

  Should I move to New York?

• 1:00:44Andy Greenwald?

  Um, no, can I come back here?

• 1:00:47Chris Ryan?

  No, I want to have a cold for nine more months.

• 1:00:50Andy Greenwald?

  Not great. Do you want to do any after dark or Sharon, is Sharon getting, is she good? She want to come in and talk sports with us?

• 1:00:55Chris Ryan?

  No, we're gonna do, Sharon Horgan's gonna come by in a minute. Are you out on the Eagles? We don't have after dark lighting, but are you gonna keep watching?

• 1:01:03Andy Greenwald?

  It's pretty tough. It's pretty tough. Now, we were having a conversation, I, well, I'll say this. I, I, I said it in the text and I just want to, I want to say it with my, my full chest. I feel quite calm about this. I do not feel, I know you heard, but I didn't text everyone.

• 1:01:17Chris Ryan?

  I know. I mean, I, much like Norm MacDonald, I wonder if you're telling the truth.

• 1:01:21Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I am. It is actually a relief.

• 1:01:23Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:24Andy Greenwald?

  To have a team that is a catastrophe, because then you can be a little bit more dispassionate about it. And it's not, you're not riding the hopium roller coaster every week. If only this, like, I don't think we're a few plays away.

• 1:01:35Chris Ryan?

  Last night was terrible. Like, last night was bad football.

• 1:01:38Andy Greenwald?

  Awful team.

• 1:01:39Chris Ryan?

  That we were too close.

• 1:01:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Chris Ryan?

  We were within touching distance of winning, so I couldn't stop.

• 1:01:44Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:01:46Chris Ryan?

  And it was the commander, so you're like, anything could happen.

• 1:01:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, Jane McDaniel, Jane Daniels could like, blow out his elbow. The next guy could throw seven interceptions, we'd win.

• 1:01:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 1:01:56Chris Ryan?

  They, a lot of the games have been that way, where it's like, oh, we're only down 11, you know?

• 1:02:01Andy Greenwald?

  No, or we just took the lead with eight seconds left.

• 1:02:05Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:02:05Andy Greenwald?

  Come on. I, I think it's okay.

• 1:02:08Chris Ryan?

  I think it's fine, because we have the Sixers. If we didn't have the Sixers, if the Sixers were like, like, 2-10 right now, I think it would be tough.

• 1:02:14Andy Greenwald?

  We also won the Super Bowl.

• 1:02:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I know. You're, you being like, completely chill and fine about this throws me off.

• 1:02:22Andy Greenwald?

  This is more, this tracks more with what I believe to be the nature of the world. But I, but I, I want to, I want to believe.

• 1:02:30Chris Ryan?

  But don't you feel like you spend so much time reading about these guys and following along on like, the offensive lineman's social media? Then don't you feel a little let down when you get before Thanksgiving or season's over?

• 1:02:41Andy Greenwald?

  No, because I have LeBaron Philon, like, taking a charge.

• 1:02:44Chris Ryan?

  There you go.

• 1:02:45Andy Greenwald?

  We have always, what is it, what is the thing? Like, we've always been at war with whatever? Like, we have always been a Sixers-first household.

• 1:02:52Chris Ryan?

  We really have been.

• 1:02:53Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, originally.

• 1:02:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Andy Greenwald?

  That was maybe one of the first things.

• 1:02:57Chris Ryan?

  The cortex for us, yeah, was Allen Iverson. We, over the next couple of episodes, so Thursday, we're gonna do some Black Doves and some Lowdown. Uh, I'm going away on vacation, uh, coming up, so I, my, my appearances may be spotty for two episodes after that, but I'm hardcore back on like, November 19th.

• 1:03:15Andy Greenwald?

  We lift you up.

• 1:03:16Chris Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 1:03:16Andy Greenwald?

  This is the time there was one set of footprints in the sand. That was when Kaia was reminding me to book someone.

• 1:03:22Chris Ryan?

  I look forward to your 45-minute solo pod that is inevitably incoming.

• 1:03:26Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:03:28Chris Ryan?

  I love it when you do that, when you're just like, oh, I, you know, like, I really don't know if I have, and then it's just like, bang, 45-minute blackout, just like, riffing on the news.

• 1:03:37Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think that?

• 1:03:39Chris Ryan?

  That's you. You did. It's a great job.

• 1:03:42Andy Greenwald?

  So, really, what I should be doing is thanking you for stopping by.

• 1:03:45Chris Ryan?

  Thanks.

• 1:03:45Andy Greenwald?

  Because otherwise, I had it all.

• 1:03:47Chris Ryan?

  You keep the seat warm for me.

• 1:03:48Andy Greenwald?

  I had it dialed in.

• 1:03:49Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kaia and Kai. Sharon Horgan up next to talk about youth.

• 1:03:52Andy Greenwald?

  See you soon.

• 1:03:54Chris Ryan?

  Sharon, thank you so much for joining the watch. Thanks for having me. I loved the first season of Youth. It was something that my wife and I really enjoyed as, as approaching 50, like, enjoyed watching this together. You know, I'd read in The New Yorker that your pitch to Casey Bloys about this show was kind of not as much of a pitch as it was a kind of state of the union of how you were doing and where, where you were kind of seeing yourself. Yeah, kind of. I mean, he was, I mean, we, we went in there to, not to pitch a show, we went in there to sort of actually hustle, hustle a deal for Merma, my production company. And then he just said, what are you, what are you, you know, what are you working on at the moment, what you're thinking about?

• 1:04:33Chris Ryan?

  And so it wasn't a pitch, it was just sort of like, well, I've been, you know, needling on, on this idea of capturing this time of my life now. In a similar way that Pulling did with my, um, 30s and Catastrophe did with, you know, starting a new family and, and marriage and, uh, you know, and I gave a few little examples of what was going on in my life. From a dating perspective that I thought were kind of funny. And, uh, and mentioned the idea of it, of, of focusing on the sandwich generation, you know? So we just chatted it, about it, and then on to something else, and then he contacted my agent and went, we, I know exactly what it is. Let's do it. And I was like, I don't even know.

• 1:05:17Chris Ryan?

  Well, that's what I was curious about is, is does, when it comes from a little bit more of, um, an impressionistic kind of like, here's sort of what I've been thinking about, does it change the writing and the creative process for you a little bit? Like, have other series that you've worked on come from a similarly, like, I'm just trying to zero in on what kind of things I'm interested in right now? Or do they have like, more of a hooky kind of thing? Well, I guess there's usually more of a, more of a hook. Yeah. Um, you know, with, with Pulling, it was, you know, on, on the sort of eve of her, of her marriage, she like, decides she hasn't lived. And, um, with Catastrophe, it was about, you know, how difficult it is to stay in, in love if you're, you know, the parents of young children.

• 1:06:02Chris Ryan?

  But also, the, the premise was, you know, they, it was, she gets pregnant after a six-night stand and, you know, American and an Irish woman. And so that was hooky and Bad Sisters, obviously. Yeah. Huge hook, you know? Yes. More familiar genre, like, for people, yeah. Exactly, very genre. Um, but this, yeah, I get, well, you know, the, the, the hook, if there, if there was one, is, you know, a woman who thinks she's about to have the freedom, she wants to sort of start again, you know?

• 1:06:35Chris Ryan?

  Um, her, you know, and that gets taken away from her when her, her son, you know, everything goes tits up for him and he's, you know?

• 1:06:41Andy Greenwald?

  Comes back from university.

• 1:06:42Chris Ryan?

  Comes back, you know, all her life plans are, you know, tossed up in the air. Apart from that, it was really just the circumstance of being this age and suddenly just having this double load. Yeah. And also, by the way, why is that such a well-kept secret? It's like, it's like childbirth, you know? Yeah. We don't really talk about it. I mean, that wasn't passed down to me by anyone. I mean, most of the things that are happening to me at this point in my life, I'm like, this would have been great to have a class on this at some point. I, I've been trying to talk about that, really, you know? I mean, it's, your, your parents are getting older and, and, or ailing, or, you know, in some cases, dying.

• 1:07:27Chris Ryan?

  And, and our, you know, our, our, our kids aren't sort of ready to, to start adulting themselves. And, you know, it is a really, really specific time. Yeah. And, and rife with difficulties and, and yet, that's kind of, I feel that information wasn't disclosed. Well, one of the things that struck me, I guess, I, it, for some reason, it didn't quite occur to me that the title of the show could just be referring to this and that this is kind of like, a not a very novel observation, but you, you go through this kind of second childhood, second, it's hormonally, like, almost the second teenage-dom. Yeah. And you are kind of like, trying to re-establish your identity at this period.

• 1:08:10Chris Ryan?

  And I, I wonder whether or not that actually becomes incredibly fun to write for, even if it's not always so fun to live through. Because you can kind of indulge in almost like, young adult. Yeah. Like, plotlines and crushes and breakups and all this, all this stuff that you thought maybe you'd left behind. I mean, she is so much more similar to her 18-year-old son than, than she thinks. And they're both having this coming-of-age, um, moment, really. And yes, it's way more fun to write about, because it was not fun to, to live it. Yeah. The thing is, is I think when I started, um, living it, there, there has been distance.

• 1:08:49Chris Ryan?

  And I kind of worked this out the other day, with each of the shows I've written, there's been like, approximately five to six years. You have to process it. Yeah, it's, that's just how, how, how it's sort of worked out. And, and I think that seems to be exactly the right amount of time to turn tragedy into comedy. Yeah. It's, you know, um, that's, that's the process. Which works well, because television takes a while to like, write it and get it going and produce it, so you wouldn't want to be like, this is kind of old news. This happened really quickly, but I started writing the, I, you know, the, the, the premise, like, the vague premise and the characters, um, before Bad Sisters. Oh, okay.

• 1:09:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so I, I, I had that. Um, but, you know, um, the actual, you know, honing in on what it is as a show and the, you, you know, the, the precinct of it and... Was the publishing world kind of in the early version of it? No, no, not at all. All, all of that. I knew I wanted her to have a job that she cared about. But, you know, it was over the development of it that I realized, no, it needs to be one of those big jobs that you don't, you're not really allowed to switch off from, you know? And being a publishing agent, I think it's good for like, the emotional reality of the show, because she's, she's always available. Like, she always has to be answering or missing calls. Exactly, exactly. And, and, and harried constantly.

• 1:10:15Chris Ryan?

  And also parenting outside of her, you know, her own family. Yeah. Because as an agent, you are really our mother to a lot of very needy babies.

• 1:10:28Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, I, I kind of, I felt that was great, great for her, what, great for the character. But then also realizing it was such a colorful world, you know, to put on screen in and of itself, you know? I, I would have, I went to the Frankfurt Book Fair, you know, as research for episode three. And then, um, I handed in a draft. Like, you know, whatever, a sort of a redraft about a week later. And I remember getting it sent back to me going, yeah, you seem to really enjoy hanging out.

• 1:11:05Chris Ryan?

  Cause it was like 90%, like everything I took in, I was just like blah. Is that, did you have to do Ibiza research as well? Or was that something you were able to, you know? Do you know what? This is so, well, weird to me, but I've never been to Ibiza. All of my, you know, peers have. Yeah. My kids have, you know? Everyone I know has been to Ibiza, except for me. So that was just, luckily, our, our series director, not, not the director who did that episode, but our series director is a huge Ibiza partier.

• 1:11:41Chris Ryan?

  And so she was able to sort of. She was able to fact check it. But, you know, so that was a bit of research and, and, and all that. But no, it was Frankfurt was more, cause I felt like I had to learn the book world. I mean, I, I know how to approximate a fun island. You know, I've been to other fun islands. But also, you know, the characters going there as, you know, as a 50 something woman, it's a different, you know, the lens is kind of different. But Frankfurt was just, that was such an eye opener. I really enjoyed, one of my favorite parts about this, this season was how it starts out and you think it's going to be largely about this woman and her son and her ex, and maybe a newer lover, ex pat.

• 1:12:26Chris Ryan?

  So I guess an older newer lover. And then it kind of becomes a little bit more of this found family workplace comedy. And I was curious whether or not, you know, you mentioned like parents getting older, kids moving out. Do you find that at this period in your life, at least for, for Alex, but also for you, do you, do you find like what's a family has kind of changed a lot in, in the last couple of years as you, are they more, is it more your friends? Is it more your colleagues now than it is? For me? Yeah. No. No, okay.

• 1:12:58Chris Ryan?

  My, my life is so small. And it kind of, sort of has to be because, because work, you know, work, you know, writing and, and, and making TV and film is such a huge part of my life. And so I'm constantly surrounded by my colleagues. So I kind of, I knew, I knew how to write about that environment. But I am such a, you know, like I clock off and I, and I go home and I don't, you know, I think the thing that suffers when you are, you know, a work oriented person and a family oriented person is your friendships. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's terrible.

• 1:13:38Chris Ryan?

  And I'm lucky that I have good friends who kind of forgive me and, and still want to hang out with me. Allow you to be a bad friend. But, but yeah, that, that sort of, what, what is work is very much work. And then, you know, I just go home and watch the traitors of my daughter.

• 1:13:57Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to ask about London as a character in the show, which is, you know, made, made various appearances throughout your TV work. But this version of it seems very familiar and very warm to me. And it is kind of like this love letter to it. Where, where do you stand when it comes to London and how it's changed over the years? And how did it, what kind of role did it play in this specific series? I mean, huge. Yeah. Because, because it was something that, you know, Amy and Casey really wanted to be part of the show, you know, that, that, that that would be part of its identity.

• 1:14:35Chris Ryan?

  And also for me, because I've all, you know, the London my characters have lived in over the years has sort of represented their, you know, their, where they, where they started and, and their kind of growth, you know? Like with pulling my character Donna, all the characters in that show lived in the worst place you could live in, in London. I'm really sorry, Penj, but that's, you know, it looked kind of like one of those places that would sort of never sort of repaired itself after the war, you know? And there's a kebab shop and there's not much else going on. It's just sort of, you know, cheap rent and low level, you know, shared accommodation. Yeah.

• 1:15:20Chris Ryan?

  And that was, you know, on purpose to sort of represent that. And then, and then with catastrophe, it was, it was very sort of East London, but a kind of prettier East London, you know? Turning point for it, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and that they had, you know, kind of represented where they were in their lives. And, and I think with, with youth, I, first of all, our director, our Dawn Shadforth,

• 1:15:45Chris Ryan?

  you know, who, who did the, the first block, London runs through her veins, you know? And so it was really important for her to, to show a London that, that didn't feel, that felt the opposite of what you'd seen previously. Yeah. You know, and in TV and film. So, so very, you know, just, just very real, no kind of recognizable kind of areas really. You know, as much as possible, finding that apartment block for, for Alex, you know, rather than having her having a sort of sitcom house. Where it's just like, how the hell did she get this Georgian townhouse? Exactly. I mean, she's got a beautiful apartment. It's a really nice apartment.

• 1:16:30Chris Ryan?

  But you know, the, the sort of, the, the, the look of it is, is kind of, you know, a bit sort of brutal, you know?

• 1:16:39Chris Ryan?

  And then the, the areas that we, we, you know, we had the opportunity to, to put on screen, we wanted it to sort of fit with, with where Rory was as much as, you know, where Alex is. And so it's just all very like, you know, kind of raw, kind of straight lines and a more kind of brutal kind of visage kind of thing. And, and, and yeah, just, just sort of backstreets and. It's also just nice, cause that character, if Alex is having this secondary adolescence or like, you know, is, it, it works in publishing. And there's just, my favorite thing about London is people are always out. People are always going out and like, you know, going to the pub or going to get cocktails

• 1:17:23Chris Ryan?

  or going to the theater or going to a movie. Yeah. It just, that doesn't translate as well to LA or to rural Vermont, like for baby boom Vermont or whatever, like, you could, there's nothing to do. So you just like stay home a lot, you know? And you have a nice place and you look out the window and it's nice. But London keeps you kind of going and up and at them. Well, a lot of those, those venues are really close to, to my home. Yeah. And, and have that sort of, like you said, that kind of vibrant, like they're alive, like they're breathing, you know? And it really kind of fitted in with that idea of her getting this opportunity to sort of live again, you know, to start over and, and then being thwarted.

• 1:18:07Chris Ryan?

  But at the same time, yeah, it's sort of, I think they were kind of, we wanted it to feel sexy as well. Yeah. You know? That's part of the appeal of it, like it, there should always be a show like this on. Like I've always historically just really liked a romantic comedy set in a city where people are just living their lives. Yeah. And they've become a little bit too rare for, for, in modern television. Yeah. I don't know. Why is that, do you think? I have a pet theory about this. What is that? It's that comedy to get sold now seems like it needs to have like a very high concept. Like they, without disparaging anything, it's like, they only have one night to have sex, you know what I mean? Like, and it's like, why don't they just meet each other in New York?

• 1:18:51Chris Ryan?

  We've been doing that for like a hundred years, right? Like that, that works. I guess unless it's sort of known IP. Yeah. Or, you know, like you said, has a high concept. You don't just get to be with characters. Yes, it's probably a harder sell. Yeah, it is a harder sell. I was curious about Alex as a central character. Cause I went back and I read this interview you had done around pulling with Dennis Kelly. And you were sort of joking, I think tongue in cheek, but also perhaps dead serious where you were like, this, the main character in pulling has no moral center, you know? And nor do I. And I think you were joking, but I think one of your gifts is that you can make likable

• 1:19:31Chris Ryan?

  people or likable characters do, make mistakes and we can watch them and we kind of go along on the mistake with that character. But that is a very delicate dance to, to try and pull off. Cause likability is like always like this major thing you hear about in television as a note, like, do you like this character from the studios or from the? Yeah. Networks, but also for fans, like for people watching, it's just like, do I want to spend this much time with somebody who maybe I do or don't like? How do you do that and also do it for yourself when you're going to be performing? Like taking your ego out of it? The, the character is, can have, can do things that you, you, you don't agree with

• 1:20:13Chris Ryan?

  or, you know, and be flawed and, and, and make mistakes and, and. Have humiliating nights, I mean, like just like everybody. Yeah, make bad choices and all that. But I do think they inherently, you need to care about them. And, and, and I've, I've watched shows myself where I've not locked into a character because I think, yeah, you're, you're, you're too bad, you know, or you're.

• 1:20:38Speaker 06

  Really don't care what happens to you, whereas I feel like you can get away with so much. If there is like an underlying kind of vulnerability, I suppose, you know, where they make mistakes, but you know why. Or they make mistakes and then they they try and make up for it in some way like in episode eight. Um, in the final episode of youth, I think Alex does some of the worst parenting and and the best parenting she does in in the whole show. And as long as you get to the

• 1:21:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Speaker 06

  best parenting bit. And as long as, honestly, I think as long as you were. Everything comes from a truthful place and you're not pushing too hard to make a character be stupid or. Or selfish, like if it comes from a place of insecurity or It's a feeling awkward in the moment, like stuff that people can actually relate to.

• 1:21:26Chris Ryan?

  I didn't really like think that I was fully conscious of it until it was too late for the character that I was like, oh, my God, she's just like head over heels. And everything is falling by the wayside because of it, because I think even in the show, like you can kind of feel in that. Seventh and especially the eighth episode is like, oh, like her work is is collapsing here. Like she's just got too many spinning plates.

• 1:21:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Chris Ryan?

  You know, this person needs their award and this person's. Their daughter is writing their book for them and then she hates this guy, but she's got to get him and they've got all this competition. But you're like watching it through the lens of like, oh, her and Pat are finally happy. This is great.

• 1:22:03Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:04Chris Ryan?

  You know, like

• 1:22:04Speaker 06

  I mean, nothing, nothing else really matters when you're content in your relationship or or when you feel like your kid is is thriving, has turned that corner and. And to finally sort of feel like that and then have both of those things kind of ripped apart whilst your career is.

• 1:22:22Chris Ryan?

  And having a UTI as the character has.

• 1:22:24Speaker 06

  Well, that was so important to me to

• 1:22:26Chris Ryan?

  The UTI?

• 1:22:27Speaker 06

  I can't tell you

• 1:22:28Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:22:29Speaker 06

  how important. Yeah, because it's it's a huge, you know, i- i- it's a big part of um. Menopause, really, like that side of things can can get really bad. And um, and it has affected me all my life.

• 1:22:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:44Speaker 06

  You know, like I was waiting to go on um Drew Barrymore like a few weeks back and I was like suddenly hit by the worst UTI and not knowing how I was gonna get through it and. So, but also like just from a practical point of view, it kind of gave the character. Room to just sort of be in that awful like toilet stall, just sort of.

• 1:23:07Speaker 06

  Broken.

• 1:23:07Chris Ryan?

  You have to have the meltdown. Yeah.

• 1:23:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, whereas, you know, kind of got it, got us out of that mad sort of awardsy kind of environment. And so even though it doesn't seem funny on the page and a lot of these things don't, you know, a lot of the time you have to ask. You know, your your partner on making the show like to to bear with you and, you know, trust that. That there, you know, that it'll be okay once it's up on its feet. And I think as well. You know, as an actor. Sometimes I would write something and then I would um turn up on set to do it and I'd be like, oh, she's. Being the worst person here. Do I, do I wanna, do I wanna be that? You know, do I wanna be in that skin for the day and?

• 1:23:53Speaker 06

  And really, you just need good people on the team to sort of

• 1:23:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Speaker 06

  you know, talk you through why you made, why you made that choice in the first place and. And again, trust that the bigger picture allows you to behave that way.

• 1:24:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:09Speaker 06

  And come out the other side, you know.

• 1:24:11Chris Ryan?

  And then I think like the very specific character relationships in this show, like Alex and Sam have. A friendship that almost predates and supersedes their professional relationship. And also perhaps negatively impacts the professionalism of their relationship. So there's all. One of my favorite running bits is how. When you or she will walk into the other's office and say something completely inappropriate has nothing to do with work. But it seems to happen like over, it's a very, very funny thing, but it's also very relatable. Like if you work with friends. Sometimes it's hard to remember to work.

• 1:24:47Speaker 06

  And and also that that blurred line where you forget that this person is paying your bills.

• 1:24:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:53Speaker 06

  And and that they are carrying the responsibility of every stupid mistake you make, you know. I I I thought that was a a really interesting ingredient to to give to a friendship, you know, because. I don't know, I I often think that friendship, especially female friendship, isn't shown in in, you know, it's kind of. Sort of rose, rose tinted, whereas like this, this dynamic of of them working together, not just working together, but one being the boss. I think gave it that sort of workplace spark, you know, where they get to, I love that, you know, that sort of. Back and forth that, you know, is sometimes ribbing, but then goes too far or.

• 1:25:38Speaker 06

  You know, when you have to absolutely park the friendship and go, you know, you're not, you're not doing your job right.

• 1:25:43Chris Ryan?

  Did you enjoy writing the the male characters on this series? Because it felt like you were catching. Different men in different stages of their life and in a very like astute and accurate way, I thought, like. It it was maybe not the central preoccupation of the show, but I thought I thought Pat and I thought Rory and and even the father like. Are all these different stages of their life and you're observing them.

• 1:26:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, and Michael Olderman as well.

• 1:26:08Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 1:26:09Speaker 06

  I think that the the great thing about making this show was that. You know, there was so many people around me sort of encouraging me to sort of.

• 1:26:22Speaker 06

  Um, like, take, take the theme of youth and apply it to all the characters. You know, so that each, each of them is sort of dealing with. A similar kind of thing, realizing that that the time they have on this earth

• 1:26:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Speaker 06

  is, you know, precious, but they're all at different stages of it, you know, so even with. You know, I mean, even, you know, Michael losing his mother and realizing that time is now to

• 1:26:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he doesn't want to be like a surrogate father, yeah.

• 1:26:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, and and and an ex-part just sort of. You know, having this biological ticking clock and even though he's falling in love, he's sort of. He's he's having to process what that might mean and. And absolutely, Lorcan for the ex, I mean, every decision he's making is a midlife crisis decision, you know, and. And how can I, how can I make this time count? And Rory, of course, you know, just

• 1:27:22Chris Ryan?

  He has his whole life in front of him, but doesn't know what to do with it, yeah.

• 1:27:25Speaker 06

  Doesn't know what to do with it and and and is so scared, you know, of of the next step and. Yeah, it was, it was amazing to have, to have that, you know.

• 1:27:36Speaker 06

  Encouragement, you know, to to sort of. To to build that up in each of the characters, because it just makes it, it just makes, it just makes such a difference to the to the final thing, because everything. Is is linked in a way, you know, um, everyone is sort of very much in in the same show.

• 1:27:53Chris Ryan?

  Do you, you ever go back and watch Pulling or go back and watch any of like? Because I I look at this stuff as part of a continuum of, you know, one big show that you've made over the course of your career.

• 1:28:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, that's as it's turned out, what it is, but obviously that was never. No, it's just like a um, um, you know, producer I I work with mentioned it. I was like, oh, my gosh.

• 1:28:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's absolutely true.

• 1:28:19Chris Ryan?

  This building's Roman, you've been

• 1:28:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Chris Ryan?

  building for like a long time.

• 1:28:22Speaker 06

  I know, I I should just pretend that I'm a sort of Richard Linklater kind of an, it's, you know.

• 1:28:27Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, it would be very cool to get like the box set.

• 1:28:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, twenty, twenty years of, you know, putting myself um on screen, but um. I don't go back and watch, you know, the thing is, if you're on social media.

• 1:28:41Chris Ryan?

  You'll see clips and stuff, yeah.

• 1:28:43Speaker 06

  Clips all the time and I, I love it, like I I have. A huge um fondness for those shows, I mean, particularly pulling because it was my first ever show.

• 1:28:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:54Speaker 06

  And I think it was really bold, you know.

• 1:28:57Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 1:28:57Speaker 06

  And in fact, it was pulling that got me my relationship with HBO, you know, Amy Grabett. Saw it like all those years ago and kind of hunted me out in in London and, you know. Was like, what can we do together?

• 1:29:12Chris Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 1:29:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, um, but it's also, it's it's also in, it was interesting for youth because. I I kind of realized, you know, Bad Sisters was such a huge thing, but such

• 1:29:25Chris Ryan?

  A completely different thing. And I had to sort of, you know, for, I don't know, pull, pulling and catastrophe and to focus a bit in order to start making youth, because I was like, no, that, that's the kind of tone. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's its own thing. And it's, it feels kind of like a, a bigger world, a more ensemble kind of world and, you know, and with the workplace being so, you know, um, such a big part of it. Um, but that, but tonally, it was just great to have those shows in, in, in the back of my head. Do you feel like writing has become easier for you over the years? Like, do you, do you think of it more as just like something you know you can ultimately do? Whereas like maybe when you're younger, you're like, is this gonna work? I also, I hate it, you know, but I love it.

• 1:30:10Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I, you still have the whole love hate thing all the way through. You know, it's, it's brutal how much you kind of, um, waver between thinking you've got this and, and thinking you've absolutely. Forgotten how to do it completely. Yeah, career up. Yeah. You know, e- every show I've ever done, I, I, I have a sort of, um, exit plan, you know, to leave the business. But, um. How elaborate do those plans get? Well, I mean, they're usually like definitely leaving the country. No, not, not fake death in so much as like backup careers, you know? And, and how to sort of, you know, how to exit in, in, in, in the most, um,

• 1:30:55Chris Ryan?

  quiet and, um, careful way. Um, but I think, you know,

• 1:31:04Chris Ryan?

  I think it hasn't got easier, but I have more confidence. You know, it's still hard in that, you know, you're like, it, it's painful, um, trying to get a, a, a series of anything off the ground, you know? It's, uh, it takes a huge amount of work and, but I definitely, and I should have by now, Jesus, like I'm 56, like I should, I've been doing this for a couple of decades. I should have built up a confidence, but it's, it's, uh, it's mad how long it took, you know? And I kind of felt it on Bad Sisters, but then I also had this incredible raw material to work with. So I was like, that felt, you know, such. Because it was an adaptation to some stuff. Yeah, right. Exactly.

• 1:31:50Chris Ryan?

  Whereas with the youth, I, I felt like, like a proper kind of confidence, you know, in, in my voice and, you know, you, you, you write things, um, down on the page. And a lot of people might read it and not see any comedy in it, but I know where the comedy is. Cause I know, I know when it's up on its feet, you know, I, I know how it will land.

• 1:32:12Chris Ryan?

  It's gonna be funny when I walk away like that, trust me. Yeah, right. Yeah, the guy's gonna get hit by on the bike and I'm gonna keep walking. Yeah. And also that thing, you, you, you have more confidence in your ability to know how to, you know, place a drama moment beside a comedy moment. And I, I've kind of done that throughout my career, but I didn't always feel that confident in it, you know? You kind of, it's kind of like squeaky bum, kind of, will this work? Yeah. And the, and the other thing is, um, trusting that you can talk about weighty stuff that, um, might not seem like comedy kind of fodder, you know?

• 1:32:55Chris Ryan?

  And, and sort of having the confidence to sort of keep it in there and fingers crossed. Fingers crossed people relate to it and, and appreciate it within that comedic setting. Yeah. And even if somebody, whoever doesn't get it, I think the person who gets it, it's offset. They're, they're like, it almost makes up for that. Cause the people who will, it'll resonate with, I think it'll resonate quite deeply. I was also wondering, you know, I really enjoyed in the research, getting ready for this is like, reading some older interviews from your early days about getting into the television business in England at the time. And the like sort of development of talent that happened at that period where you're

• 1:33:37Chris Ryan?

  writing sketches for sketch shows and maybe appearing on like news comedy programs and stuff. And slowly building up and then, you know, working with Dennis Kelly and doing pulling and then going on from there. And I love that, like you've, you've adapted stuff, you've written stuff that you're not in, like Motherland. Uh, you've done all these different things, but there's been this interesting transition that's happened where like, there isn't like, it's TV in England and TV in America, and they're completely separate entities. Like, they're kind of like, it's all just big TV now. Yeah. And even to the point now where when I come across a show that's on in England and I'm like, so I can't watch that now? That's, that's kind of surprising, whereas it used to be like, I had to like illegally download Black Mirror, you know?

• 1:34:21Chris Ryan?

  This isn't a question, it's just like, what do you make of how everything has changed over the time that you've spent in the business? Cause you've got such a unique perspective on it. Yeah, it, it, and it is so different. You know, um, after I made pulling, I, you know, I came to the US. Yes, which was a thing people did then, yeah. It was such a thing people did, but you have to wait, you have to wait for your right moment, you know? And, uh, and the right moment was apparently when the last season of, um, pulling went out. Like now I'm ready. Yeah. Um, uh, but I, I came over here to make American TV, which seems wild now. Cause that's, it would not be, it would not be like that, you know?

• 1:35:02Chris Ryan?

  Initially wasn't even, it wasn't even able to write stuff for myself, because I didn't have a profile here. So I was writing for bigger name, creating shows for bigger name actors, you know, to be in. And then eventually, you know, got to do it myself. But it was, um, yeah, there was such a, such a divide, you know? There was the odd thing that kind of, um, broke through on both sides, like The Office, maybe. You know, the original Office, but other than that. But even that was pretty niche, like you had to like find the DVD and. Was it that you would have watched it on, on BBC? Well. I think it would have been, first it would have been DVDs.

• 1:35:44Chris Ryan?

  Like there was like, The Office UK was available and comedy nerds loved it first. And then it became, oh, if you've seen the US version, you, you should watch this. Yeah. But yeah, I remember watching that, I can't remember how I got it, but some DVD of it. I mean, it's just, it's so funny, because I was just watching the Oasis documentary that came out. Oh, I haven't seen that yet. And I was remembering back when, you know, when I was in college and they were first kind of coming out. There was still like this, like, when is Oasis gonna be ready for the States? You know, do they have to put out like a certain kind of song? And it's like, it turns out they were ready for the States, you know? But that was still like a, a thing back then.

• 1:36:20Chris Ryan?

  It's funny, isn't it? Because then there's the other way around where, you know, Blondie made it in, in, in England, London first, for again. And, and you know, that sort of new wave with the yeah, yeah, yeahs and the Strokes and the CD sign system. That was like London and then they came back. But, and, and, and, you know, obviously there's TV and sort of film versions of that. But it still felt like, it felt so alien, you know? The whole process, I couldn't ever really get my head around the, the idea of like the old school kind of pilot system. I did not understand how it was anything other than a game. You know, it didn't seem like real to me that everyone would just go, go.

• 1:37:04Chris Ryan?

  And everyone would go after the same people, the same actors, the same directors, the same.

• 1:37:07Chris Ryan?

  To make one episode. To make one episode of something that they would spend millions on and that would never air. Yeah. Um, but I did it multiple times, multiple, multiple. Do you have those old pilots at all? Like, do you have ever? I have one of them, um, it was called Bad Management. I'm, it was, um, actually that was the first one that I got to kind of star in. Okay. So it's myself and David Spade. No way. Oh, it was hilarious. We had such a laugh, um, making. Did you have to do an American accent? No, no, I was just, yeah, just, just me. But yeah, that is somewhere, that was gas. And, and then, yeah, I, I made so many remakes of, you know, UK shows I'd made, like, like pulling, like Dead Boss.

• 1:37:52Chris Ryan?

  Um, again, like just these incredible casts, incredible, um, actors and beautifully made, beautifully put together things that no one ever, never saw like a day. We're good. And this is pre sort of the Netflix thing, so it never had that opportunity of, like NBC didn't make it, so therefore let's pivot. So they were just gone, like they were just, you know, kind of over. Is there anything to the idea that, um, the styles of shows and the, maybe the sensibilities of shows? Kind of the distinctions between American and English TV disappear after a while? Like, do you find now it's like, I am making this for a sort of Western global audience? Yeah, yeah, I suppose there, there is that.

• 1:38:32Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it used to be that the sensibility was so different that it affected the, the writing, you know? Like, and, and, and this is mainly, I think, um, down to, you know, um, network TV rather than what was happening on HBO or whatever. But, you know, you really, you really couldn't show someone being bad at their job. Yeah, you know, you had to be, I'm, I made a, um, a pilot called Bad Mom and I wasn't really allowed to show her be a bad, bad mom. I had to wait and sort of do that in the UK, you know? Men weren't allowed to be emasculated in, in any way, you know?

• 1:39:13Chris Ryan?

  There, there was like certain things that you had to sort of, um, check off before it could. It's kind of like the old like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood stuff where it's like, the star can't lose a fight. You know, you, you, you, you had to have, um, you know, like an, and the ending had to be a, a, an ending. You know, it had to be very rose tinted and, but, but now it feels like, because you are thinking of a more. Kind of global audience because so many things crossover, you know, just European shows like Call My Agent. And, you know, it does feel like that whole, when the Scandi kind of drama became a thing,

• 1:39:53Chris Ryan?

  it kind of, it feels like it's sort of blurred the lines, you know, and you can kind of, there is a lovely kind of creative freedom that comes with that. Yeah, I think generally it's been a net positive for TV audiences. Yeah. I miss the days when I would watch something like Spaced or, you know, early Black Mirror or even like saw Broadchurch for the first time. And I was like, holy shit. This is so different. This is like Broadchurch was very dark compared to like even the police procedurals that we would have at the time. And I remember it felt, it felt good because it was so distinct

• 1:40:38Chris Ryan?

  from the way that American TV kind of functioned at the time. So sometimes I miss it. But I think it's also cool that like my cousin in London can watch this show at the same time as me in Los Angeles. Yeah. And we can all have the same conversation. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was, I think there was this thing that I, I, I used to feel anyway, was that that US TV was just kind of bigger and better. And that's where you wanted to, to be. If you really wanted to fulfill your ambitions, it had to be through, It's get to Hollywood. You had to get to Hollywood. Like you said, like shows like Broadchurch and Happy Valley or, you know,

• 1:41:20Chris Ryan?

  or like Shameless, like doing something really sort of new and exciting. And, you know, of a level that, you know, completely sort of can absolutely compete. Yeah. You know, made making TV in the UK very exciting. As of sitting down, I know that the, I haven't heard anything about A Renewal for you, season two, but it very much feels like a show that could go on and that you've created like a whole world that. Oh, we just got the renewal, actually. Okay, good, good. Yeah, just actually Casey just called me before I came in here. She said, you should tell the watch. Yeah. You should tell the watch to scoop. Um, yeah. So, you know, I, I kind of, I approached. Congratulations. Thank you.

• 1:42:03Chris Ryan?

  I approached the finale of, of most things in a way, you know, so that it can just sort of exist and, you know, if it, if it, if it continues, it continues. But you want it to feel like a very satisfying end. So I could, that's what I did with, with you. So I was kind of like, you know, if it happens, it happens. But I did always see it as, as continuing. Yeah, that would have been a gutsy way to end this show. I think a lot of people who were Pat fans would probably. But it was a beautiful moment to end the, the, the season on with her. With Rory, yeah. Yeah, getting back bookending, getting into Bert. Her, her needing, her needing him. Well, I love the show. Thank you so much for coming by today. And it was really great to talk to you. Nice to talk to you, too.

• 1:42:54Speaker 00

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• 1:42:57Andy Greenwald?

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