Interview with Josh Braeburn #1

Jingoistic Claptrap: I hear you're working on a new concept?

JB: Yeah, actually the team is kinda retooling it at the moment, we're pretty excited. Y'see, the numbers show that redesigning and updating old TV shows can really work. First you have that ready made nostalgia base, then there's the family factor, plus you have a lot of old scripts lying around that you can pretty much reuse, generally without too much work. The hard parts are already done.

JC: Like?

JB: I always have trouble with character names. I can never think of anything with any punch, you know? Last time I was over here, I asked Russ Davies about it and he told me he just opens the Swansea telephone directory at a random page.

JC: Did that help?

JB: I guess you have to pick your times for that technique. We tried it, but the story of an Old West trauma surgeon called Jack Patel...it didn't fly.

JC: Back to the current project. What's the property you're currently working with?

JB: Ah, you'll love this. See, back in the late seventies there was this show on the BBC. Cutting edge stuff. It was actually on in a really pushing the envelope timeslot, had supernatural elements, asked questions about the nature of the human soul and what awaits us in the beyond...astounding stuff. So when we heard the rights were available we just went for it.

JC: That covers so many shows of the era.

JB: Really? Well, you might even have seen it. It was called "Rentaghost".

JC: Rentaghost?

JB: You didn't catch it? That's too bad. It's got everything. So in the process of updating it for the 21st century audience, we've have to tweak a few things.

JC: Like?

JB: Well, first the name. I mean, no one really wants to rent a ghost...right? So that had to go. So we're calling it "Mumford". It's a working title. We might add "The" and "Files" to that.

JC: The Mumford Files?

JB: Hey, when you say it in that order it sounds even better. OK, lemme blackberry that to the team. So there's this guy, Jack Mumford, who when he was alive was an average type guy with all the worries of an average type guy, but then he falls off the Staten Island Ferry...

JC: You moved it to New York?

JB: Vancouver. The whole ferry thing is backstory, so we don't have to film there. Anyway, he wakes up a ghost and then has to figure out how he's going to make his way in the world. You know? Is he going to keep in touch with his family? Is he going to try to find a way into the light? But we want this to be a little more dark and gritty...so we're going to have him haunted by the failures of his past life. Like he was never there for his kid, or something, or he needs to come to terms with his wife's infidelity.

JC: Are any of the other original characters going to make it into the new treatment?

JB: Sure! In the original there was this giggling guy with a stupid hat in tights. So we thought we could bring him into the update if we changed the wardrobe a lot. So now there's Tim Claypole, who's a standup comic from the 70s - to catch that whole perception that the 70s were about sex and drugs and booze we're going to make him an alcoholic addict with rage issues.

JC: In the original, he was a poltergeist.

JB: Yeah, well, we might want to look into that ethnicity a little, see if it's a demographic worth not offending and all - we're normally really careful about that - but we wanted to show this guy as kinda struggling against his darker side by, you know, telling jokes.

JC: Jokes.

JB: Vintage jokes.

JC: And what about the other supporting characters, like Mr. Davenport the Victorian ghost and the landlord Harold Meeker?

JB: They're in! We were kinda concerned about Mr. Davenport because there really didn't seem to be a lot of directions to take him in. In the end we decided to keep him English, as a little nod to the original show, and to keep him from that whole 1880s area. We'll be hinting that he has a really dark past, and all that, because there's only one thing coming out of England way back then.

As for Harold Meeker, we thought that we could build him up some more too. We're thinking that he's the show's Big Bad and that he's maybe a kind of Tony Soprano figure.

JC: He doesn't sound very much like a Tony Soprano.

JB: That's why we set it in Vancouver. With a name like Meeker, what else are you going to do? Is there a Canadian Mafia? I don't know. Sure as hell don't want to end up calling him Patel...or worse, Jones. Anyway, we're working our way up to the pilot and we hope to premiere the whole thing in time for next Spring. It's an exciting time.

JC: Josh, thanks for your time.