Coupland’s JPod jumps to TV
The CBC has officially announced that it is turning Douglas Coupland’s novel JPod into a 13-part TV series. Written by Coupland and directed by Mike Clattenburg of Trailer Park Boys fame, the show is slated to air on CBC in January 2008. The series, like the book, will follow the wackily postmodern lives of a group of video-game designers. Its pilot was shot back in November 2006, and most of its stars are Canadian, including some young starlets and the erstwhile Growing Pains Seaver patriarch, Alan Thicke.
The Globe and Mail’s John Doyle wrote last week about his visit to the pilot’s Vancouver set, where he claimed to be befuddled by the kooky goings-on.
I ask Thicke what kind of comedy he’s involved with here. How would he describe it? “This comedy is avant-garde,” he says emphatically. “It’s like Weeds or Arrested Development. It’s family fun gone bad.”
Next I ask J.B. Sugar, who is an executive producer (along with his father, Larry Sugar) and a co-writer of the series with Coupland. “I’d call it smart comedy,” Sugar says. “Dark comedy, maybe, but ‘dramedy’ is the best word.”
I’m still at a bit of a loss, but some of what’s happening around me is definitely weird. In Coupland’s book, mind you, a lot of the fun is in the text – wacky e-mails and slogans or gibberish printed in wildly different typefaces. How will that be translated to a TV series, I ask Sugar. “Very abstract cutaways will be used. Some visual, some just text.”
“Dramedy”? LOL. How 1988.
I do like the series, more than the novel itself. It translates well to TV.