Debuting on Adult Swim this week, NTSF:SD:SUV gives TV crime procedurals a long overdue parody. The series is created by Paul Scheer (Human Giant), who stars as Trent Hauser, a grizzled, determined, no-nonsense crime-fighter in the tradition of, well… a whole bunch of shows.
I visited the set of the series and spoke to Scheer who said he'd watched plenty of procedurals, which helped him notice certain similarities they all share. Discussing the heroes of these shows, Scheer explained, "The one thing is, these people, a lot of times, are the most emotionless people that you'll ever meet. But every three or four episodes their best friends have been killed. I don't think these people have a social life, but it's, 'That was my best friend!' It's like, wait, this guy? You don't talk about anything outside of work and that's your best friend?" Scheer added, "Everything becomes high stakes immediately. It's like, 'That paper was missing… and that paper was supposed to be delivered to my mother!' There's a lot of that."
"That's the one thing that I love," Scheer continued. "Everything is at a ten. Every case is the most important thing. And then it just starts right over again the next week. Clean slate. You've never heard of anything. They're in love. They were depressed. Brand new episode and it's a clean slate."
Describing Trent Hauser, Scheer said, "He's like Jack Bauer if he had sex with David Caruso while Gil Grissom was watching – if Michael Bay art directed it. I've been married seven times – twice to the same woman. Who is actually my boss on the show, played by Kate Mulgrew – Captain Janeway from Voyager, which is awesome and she is amazing."
- Adult Swim
Besides Mulgrew, the supporting cast includes Martin Starr (Freaks and Geeks, Party Down) and Rebecca Romijn, playing what Scheer calls "our lab geek." Noted Scheer, "I think one of the fun things about these shows also is all of their tech people are way hot. They're not lab geeks, but they treat them like lab geeks. All they do is take a guy with frosted blond tips and put a Bluetooth in his hair and it's like, 'Ah, he's a geek!' So we obviously got one of the most attractive women ever to be our lab geek and everyone treats her like she's ugly and she's homely and she really takes it. We're probably more suited to be the lab geek and now in this show she's the lab geek and we're all the heroes."
Scheer revealed that there will be a ton of guest stars on NTSF, including, Julian Sands, Martin Kove, JK Simmons, Adam Scott and John Cho, among many others. Said Scheer, "We're getting all these really great people to come in and do little thing. We wanted to cast people who might actually pop up on these shows and go more that way. And we have a lot of comedy people."
I remarked to Scheer that an odd part of the huge success of so many procedurals is that they typically skew towards older viewers – which, I extrapolate means that old people love murder. Scheer nodded, replying, "Old people… they're really sick! They're vicariously living through it. 'Oh, I'll kill this person!'"
NTSF:SD:SUV premieres the night of Thursday, July 21st at 12:15am ET/PT on Adult Swim - Yes, that's technically Friday morning!
Old promo for the show released a year ago. Show hasn't actually started yet on TV.
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Adult Swims: NTSF:SD:SUV (crime procedural parody)
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