Murder in a Small Town ended Season 1 by solving its latest murder mystery but started character arcs for almost every main character.
That was smart, leaving the door open for a potential Season 2. We talked to executive producer Jeff Wachtel, an expert on blue-sky procedurals since he’s helmed many like Monk and Suits.
Wachtel shared his thoughts on the best of Murder in a Small Town Season 1, including Karl and Cassandra’s relationship and James Cromwell’s performance as George Wilcox.
He also discussed the challenges of adapting a long-running book series to television, casting guest stars, and some teasers for a potential Season 2.
Check out the interview below.
The finale ended by solving the murders but left a few stories open for the main characters. What are the chances of a second season?
It’s from your lips. The ratings have been excellent and on the upswing. Everybody was slightly nervous about the three-week hiatus for the World Series and the election.
We returned pretty strong, and it was even better the following week. The L7s were particularly strong for Murder in a Small Town Season 1 Episode 6.
People who missed it live wanted to catch up. It’s up to the network. We think a show that is a co-production with a much lower price point than some of their other series performs better than most, and it’s building a loyal audience base.
Not every show finds its rhythm in the first season. I think this show found its rhythm in the first scene in the café. I read the script, saw the dead body and a beautiful location, and then read this incredible dating scene on page four.
That’s not a typical show. This was a relationship we could root for. Then we cast Rossif, who has this beautiful, warm, shaggy but a bit of an internal sensibility.
He doesn’t like to rush into the room with a macho fervor. He plays it close to the vest. He has some damage but approaches the world with kindness and thoughtfulness.
It’s all Zoom these days for chemistry reads. Kristin poked him in the right way. He read with a few actresses before her, and, you know, he was on the script and doing his thing, and it was all fine.
When Kristin Kreuk came in and started jabbing, you saw him stand up and look up from his script, which changed things.
She wasn’t going along and getting along. She was her own fully realized character and the heart and soul of the show. I think you think the heart and soul of the show is their relationship.
Oh, I do. So, do you think Karl and Cassandra’s relationship helped to promote the series, then?
It is terrific in many ways. It’s a beautiful blue-sky closed-ended, well-executed, well-acted, well-written procedural. He will probably get to the root of the crime with the help of his trusty band of intelligent people.
But I don’t know what will happen with the two of them. They’re fully dimensional adults with exciting stories about which we will learn more.
If we get Season 2, we’ll learn more about what a spectacularly gorgeous, incredibly well-educated woman is doing in a little resort town. We’ll also learn more about Karl and his mother, whom he may have idealized in some ways but who was damaged.
Cassandra will have a legitimate career arc; the political aspect we mentioned in the finale plays out more.
Those are excellent teasers. If we get a Season 2, will we see more of Sid and Corporal Yen? Because we’ve only touched the surface of their backstories, and they are also fan favorites.
100%. We teased Isabella, too, with her application to law school, and that’s an open door she will walk through. Many things that were just mentioned will be more dimensional.
Corporal Yen had a phenomenal scene in episode 6, where she confessed to Cassandra that she feels real guilt about having been selected as the face of solving a crime she doesn’t feel like she earned. She will have to work through those demons as well as her personal life.
We were happy with our guest and supporting casting on this show. Mya was somebody I saw on Yellowjackets, and then I learned that she was Canadian and wanted to work in Vancouver.
We were between some dates and other things she was doing, and she was a guest. I think she’s incredible. We don’t have a deal with her for the second season yet, but we hope and intend to bring her back.
Aaron Douglas is another. I love the character actors, Laura. Long-time character actors, you’re usually in excellent hands when you give them the reins and let them run.
It started for me with Monk and Tony Shalhoub. Tony Shalhoub had never played a lead when we cast him as Monk. But everybody knew how brilliant he was, and he was an incredible career character actor who was ready for his moment.
So that’s what you want. You want a show with amazing chemistry between the two principals. You can write a scene for Aaron and Mya and not worry about the audience’s attention drifting because they’re also great.
I think Yen and Isabella are two characters who have found each other. We wish we had more real estate to write about in the first season. In the second season, we will write about their relationship. They had excellent chemistry in the scene where they were together at the gym.
I can’t wait. I enjoy their friendship. So, since you think you will probably get a second season, how will you tackle that if there are only three books left of material?
We never thought we would live in the books forever. In one of your columns, you made a good point about the difficulty of adapting and jamming a novel into a 60-minute format.
What we could do with the first one was originally a two-hour that we cut back to an hour and a half to be more expensive with that one.
In general, we don’t need them. We know who the character is. We always knew that we had a limited runway with the novels on the long-running series.
Ian Weir is spectacular at adapting and bringing texture and other things to books. I haven’t read all the books, but I read a couple of them, which don’t mirror the episode.
As an astute viewer, you will have seen that the last two episodes were a book, but the network wanted to have some resolution to the second to Murder in a Small Town Season 1 Episode 7.
They did not want to do a two-parter because they were concerned about audience retention. The story in the gym is an invented story that we did to ensure closure. If you know the book, it’s about the high school teacher and the serial killer.
But an audience that may only want to watch it as a closed-ended has a resolution. It’s a murder. It’s a dad protecting his kid, and it resolves. And by the way, I think we’re dealing with a serial killer. So, there’s a bit of a continuation.
The short answer is that we’re fine. I don’t even know if we’re using those last three books. I’m not sure where Ian is. I know where we are in the first four episodes of Story Break, but I don’t know if he’s used any of the novels in the potential Season 2.
We’re feeling just fine. We have established all of the characters and the place. And we will continue to be faithful to the world that she created. But we don’t need more novels to take us down that path.
So, what would you say to diehard fans complaining that the series is not exactly like the books? I like it the way it is, but I still have people complaining in my articles that it’s not like the books.
Anybody doing what we do for a living must walk a tightrope between honoring the diehard fans of existing material and creating a world open to new viewers and people. Denis Villeneuve needed to do it with Dune, and we needed to do it with Murder in a Small Town.
It’s a tightrope that we carefully walk, honoring the long legacy of these books and the people who were the most in love with them.
We have also introduced an entirely new audience who does not have to have read the books to fall in love with them, especially because the core audience of the books is pretty small relative to the millions of people experiencing them on Fox.
So, yes, we’re honoring that. We understand that the true diehards will question things, and hopefully, they’ll know that creating a television series means serving a much bigger audience and a different rhythm of storytelling.
As you’ve already noted, it’s kind of tough to take a 250-page book and cram it into 42 minutes of television.
I also think it’s harder to do thrillers. I’ve also written articles on Will Trent, which is a murder thriller series that was turned into a TV series.
Liz Heldens is an old friend; I think she’s done excellent work on the show. Of course, each network has its sensibility. Fox is a bit more literal about things than ABC, which tends to have a bit more of a wink at the audience, maybe with High Potential.
You’re trying to create great work and serve the audience you think you should be serving. And then, three, it’s a business. The network is the project’s primary licensee.
They are the most critical investors in it as the primary exhibition, and you have to listen to them. They have many thoughts about storytelling, too.
Totally. I’ve read some of the books, and I think they keep the heart of it in it when it’s developed for TV.
That’s probably the best word for it. If you want to keep the heart of it, then some of the limbs might be slightly different. You try to retain that as long as you have the heart and soul.
Is there anything you wish had been done differently this season?
I think we exceeded expectations. We have a smaller budget than some other shows.
To a casual or dedicated viewer, you can’t compare an episode of our show to any of the other shows on the network that cost 50% more, and nobody will say this is the bargain basement version. We are punching above our weight creatively and with production.
It would be nice to have a little bit more money. I want to explore some other locations in Season 2. There’s a little bit of that Murder She Wrote convenience—a whole lot of murders that are happening in a pretty small area.
We hope the audience was with us for the first part of the journey. We’re aware that you can’t do that forever. One of the places that we’re going in Season 2 has an expanded purview.
I would have liked to have been more free-ranging, traveling 100 miles north or entering Vancouver or the big city. We’re already figuring out other places to go in the second season.
Are you dreaming of big Canadian guest stars for next season, too?
As someone who has been very kind to the show and a fan of what we’ve done so far, I want to retain and do better. The movie was written 30 years ago, and Donald Sutherland was attached to star in the lead role as Alberg. The movie never came together.
When I saw the script two years ago, Donald played George Wilcox in the two-hour pilot.
Then he got older, and his health was failing, and he couldn’t do it. He wanted to do it after we cast Rossif, which was a fun coincidence. They were very close. But his health was failing, and he couldn’t.
So, we made our wish list, and at the top of my dream list was James Cromwell. I had an excellent relationship with his fantastic agent, Chris Schmidt. She said Cromwell responds to material, so I sent her the script.
He loved it, and he was spectacular to work with. He was an 85-year-old shooting at two in the morning, schlepping a rowboat up a hill.
That one scene, which is one of my favorites in the season, where he’s doing the memory piece about how he failed his sister and feels complicit in his parents’ death just by the fact that he wished them dead.
We’re going to try to get him an Emmy nomination. I think it’s at that level. So that set the tone. By the way, Fox was on board. We couldn’t afford him within our budget, so they stepped up. He’s a world-class actor.
Different people want different things. Stana Katic was essential to Fox because she brought that Castle audience. I was in love with having Noah Reid from Schitt’s Creek because he’s such an outstanding actor and only known as the sweet, good boyfriend.
I thought no one was going to believe he was a serial killer. I thought that was a tremendous gift. He’s not a super famous guy, but that’s the level of guest cast that we will continue to reach for. Sometimes, you want it. Then, there’s the reunion episode.
Erica and Kristin. I was a huge Smallville fan. I liked that one.
So that was another. We were able to make some hay with that on the promotion.
Murder in a Small Town Season 1 Episode 2 was about the two brothers, the rooked construction guy, and the reunion. That one didn’t call for a high-end guest star. There were three or four crucial characters.
So, we spent our money not getting regular day players but stepping up to the level of actors. None of the characters were featured here.
But every scene was significant, and there were a bunch of scenes that did not involve Karl and Cassandra. We better have some excellent actors. So that’s where we put our money. So, it’ll always be about like that.
Well, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. My fans are going to love this article.
Hopefully, we’ll have good news for them sooner than March. We have a unique production schedule and need to take advantage of Gibson.
We hope to be back in production in the spring and hope for good news. If it does happen, it won’t be as late as March.
Murder in a Small Town currently streams on Hulu.
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