Adapting ‘Husbands’: Comics and television
Jane, you come from a more traditional TV background. Do you approach ‘Husbands’ differently due to the different format?
Espenson: Oh, it’s exactly the same. I’ve worked on sitcoms, they are traditionally made up of three eight minute acts, which is how we write. Ours is exactly the traditional sitcom writing format, there is nothing different.
Bell: Right. From the beginning, even the two minutes episode are just the eight minute acts broken into smaller chunks. We did that as a statement that it’s all television. The format can change, it doesn’t have to, and even if it looks different, it might not be. So what we call an episode is really just the first part of the show that you’d see before the commercial break.
Would you ever move ‘Husbands’ off the web to television?
Bell: Sure. I think everything is on the web now no matter what. Even if you’re broadcast first, you’re on the web the next day or simultaneously, so I don’t think we would ever move off the web. But would we include broadcast as part of our distribution? Sure.
Espenson: I think that if we could go to a place where we had the money to make a whole rack of episodes, whether it’s broadcast or digital almost doesn’t matter anymore. We want to go where we can get the biggest audience for the biggest amount of material.
Will we see the comics diverting more and becoming their own universe, or could you see them running parallel to the series?
Bell: That’s a cool idea.
Espenson: Yeah, it’s a cool idea. They are already sort of in a different universe, so we would probably keep going with that. We probably wouldn’t, I don’t think, write the domestic version. A comic book version of their every day lives doesn’t feel like the right use for a comic book format.
Bell: I think there is a hybrid that would be fun to experiment with. I would like to, if we did it again, change the format. And instead of spending time in different universes – which was more a fun exploration of comic book tropes – I would love to do the Scott Pilgrim format, and have every day life that is super heightened, and surreal, and lives in a very comic book world.
Do you ever come up with an idea for the show and think actually, this would be better for the comic book?
Espenson: You know what’s interesting, if we had an idea like that we would probably just set it aside, because we are really thinking about the show. We may have some of those in our notes, but we haven’t been thinking in that way.
Bell: Yeah. I think we have come up with some stories that would translate to a comic book. I don’t know if necessarily it would be better for the comic, but stories that have characters who would create great opportunities for arch-villains, and epic battles, and things like that.
Espenson: And also, like when we made the Buffy animated show that never actually got made, we thought of those stories where like, Buffy gets shrunk down in size gradually – and would be impossible to shoot. So if we wanted to do, Cheeks and Brady go on a hot air balloon ride, and we discover Cheeks is afraid of heights, that would be a perfect one for the comic book, because how are you going to shoot that?
Bell: On a green screen!
Espenson: Yeah, that’s true.
‘Husbands’ season 3 promo:
Credit: Photos by Jonathan Reilly
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