A lot of the series I’ve done for Madison have been shows I’ve been listening to for years. But still, before I write any of them, I immerse myself in the episodes. I play them every night as my “bedtime ritual” and it gets the tone and feel of the show in my brain. So when I take the script I want to adapt and start adding Madison, I have a solid basis of how I believe the other characters would react. This is a necessary technique for TV writers and one I’ve been doing for 3 decades. To prove yourself as a writer, your “portfolio” is what they call “spec scripts” or “speculative” scripts. You take a current TV show and write your own original episode. It’s to showcase that you can capture the voices of the lead characters as well as keeping the tone of the show. So perfect training for what I do with Madison! But what happens when there aren’t any episodes to listen to for reference?
In Year Two I was recommended the show, “Defense Attorney” which only has five surviving episodes. I listened to all five and had to just do my best. However, for “Hot Copy” there are no episodes available in the public domain to listen to! Jim Goodluck was able to get the original scripts from a local library and has been reproducing the episodes pretty much “as is” in his audio drama podcast, “Hot Copy Radio Theater.” And he was the one who gave me this script to do. He gave me this specific episode because it was so outside the norm of a regular “Hot Copy” episode that the cast was hesitant to do it. So he thought a little Madison spin would make the episode work. So that left me in a tough spot! While I could read the original scripts and listen to his episodes (which I already do), for this very specific episode, I had no point of reference when adapting it!
I researched the original series best I could. I think because the show isn’t available to listen to, no one really has done much of a history dive into the program. I found a few short mentions of it that I had to then glean information from to paint a picture. The info was so incomplete, everywhere I read it said “Sergeant” Flannigan, but with Jim and the cast deep in the scripts, they discovered Flannigan had eventually been made “Lieutenant” by the time my episode rolled around in 1944. That said, Flannigan wasn’t even in the “Weed of Violence” episode! So here I was trying to write him into a script he wasn’t actually part of, and only going off of info I could find online. So no promotion for you, Flannigan. Likewise, Spritely, Anne’s best friend and sidekick on her adventures, wasn’t in this episode, either! So I wrote her in as a cameo (no spoilers if you haven’t listened yet!) I gave her lines from the original script and adapted them for Samantha, Jim’s actress, more than I did the real “Spritely” since I didn’t have much background on her at all. That was the tricky part. Not having the real actor’s voices to run in my head as I crafted the dialogue.
In the grand scheme of it all, getting the voices spot on doesn’t make or break our show. But I strive to recreate the tone and characters each episode we do. I like that feel of authenticity for a wide variety of reasons. Madison’s jokes are truly “sitcom” or “situational comedy” jokes. And that means I need to create the situation accurately for the jokes to land. Also, these series have survived 70+ years. There’s a reason for that. What they originally did worked. So not only the character voices, the writing tone, but even the music (NO clue what music “Hot Copy” might’ve used!) all are why the show succeeded. Likewise, if you are a fan of a particular series we do, I hope you get the added enjoyment of feeling like we’re giving you the experience of listening to the original show how it would’ve been if Madison truly had been zapped into it.
