Mad Dogs: Shawn Ryan Discusses His Amazon Pilot

Ryan Discusses His Vision For Amazon’s Mad Dogs  Pilot. In a recent interview with Hitfix, Mad Dogs writer and executive producer Shawn Ryan discussed why he chose to remake a British series for Amazon and how his vision will differ from that of the original.

Ryan on what interested him in the original and why he was part of the new version,

I loved the tone of it, the unpredictability of it, the way that the character work grew and grew each episode. I had gotten to know Cris and was developing a different show with him when Sony bought the company that produced “Mad Dogs” UK. They asked Cris and I if we would like to do an American version. Cris and I talked. For all that he liked about the UK version, there were also a lot of things he would want to do differently now. Back then, he never thought they would make more than four episodes so he never really thought the back-story through a lot. He liked the idea of starting with the original premise and then quickly splintering off into a completely new version. We also talked about how American men were different than British men and how that might affect the show. He started to get really excited about the notion, which made me really excited.

It is difficult to understand why it is still de rigeueur to take existing British television series and remake them for American audiences when the new series consistently lack the style and charm of the originals. The recent Fox drama Gracepoint is a classic example of an American series that failed to live up to the comparisons of the UK series despite being a engrossing show in its own right.

One of the biggest differences between American and UK television is that UK series have much shorter season’s of about 6 episodes. One of the more compelling aspects of the Mad Dogs remake is that UK series creator Cris Cole will be contributing to the American show and using the program’s expanded season to flesh out back-story that he was unable to work in to the UK series.

On The Mad Dogs Pilot:

When a group of underachieving 40-something friends gather in Belize to celebrate the early retirement of an old friend, a series of wild, comedic events unfold, exposing dark secrets and a web of lies, deception and murder.  Starring Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos), Romany Malco (Weeds), and Ben Chaplin. Written by Cris Cole, directed by Charles McDougall, and  executive produced by Shawn Ryan. Mad Dogs is an Amazon pilot and has not yet been picked up as a series.

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Source: Hitfix, IMDB