When he was based at ABC's Los Angeles offices during the making of Sports Night, he once joked that if an executive building being constructed next to his offices was completed during the lifetime of the show, he and his crew would have to move to New York.In one of the latter episodes in the series, Sorkin had one of his presenter characters explode to the higher-ups: "Just because we didn't execute all the network's suggestions doesn't mean we weren't listening; it just means we didn't agree. (She is now an independent producer.) Sorkin has written an entertainment president character called Jamie McDeere (Tarses spent much of her time at NBC under the married name McDermott), who also happens to have had a guiding hand in Friends and Mad About You.Sorkin has never made a secret of his distaste for network and studio executives. broadcast network hell-bent on doing nothing that might challenge their audience." The producer also lays into programmes that involve "eating worms for money", a clear reference to the NBC gross-out challenge Fear Factor.The script also contains a very direct reference to the former NBC executive Jamie Tarses, who helped develop such comedy hits as Friends and Mad About You before moving to ABC. A script of the pilot episode seen by the Los Angeles Times and Variety, shows that Sorkin appears to have fed off his experience of the executive suits at NBC and used it to shape characters with more than a few traits in common with real-life counterparts.Just as West Wing was occasionally used as a vehicle for Sorkin to comment, at least obliquely, on the real political world, it seems Studio 7 contains more than a little criticism of the vulgarisation of small-screen entertainment.In episode one, the comedy show's executive producer melts down on camera - a bit like Peter Finch's newsreader Howard Beale in the 1970s movie Network - and rants: "This show used to be cutting-edge political and social satire, but it's gotten lobotomised by a ... Currently, the show centres on an appropriately red-blooded Republican Party primary season in anticipation of a new presidential election.If The West Wing has proved uncomfortable to conservatives, and to hard-bitten real-world Democrats, one wonders what television executives will make of Studio 7.
The West Wing has been a critical success, a cultural touchstone and a reliable money-spinner since its debut in the twilight of the Clinton administration in 1999. The show came under fire for being a liberal Democrats' wish-fulfillment fantasy, especially after the radical rightward turn taken by the United States in the wake of the 11 September attacks, but it has never lost its audience.Instead, it has moved partly with the times, as the fictional Bartlet administration struggles through serious second-term blues. In that context, a new series from golden-boy Sorkin could not be more timely.Entertainment press reports say the bidding on Studio 7 was intense, and the outcome was a promise by NBC to pay what may well be a record figure for an untested series. The network has committed to 13 episodes at almost $2m per episode, the kind of money usually laid out for established hits in their third or fourth year.It is not clear whether NBC and its rivals loved the idea, or merely loved the idea of Sorkin working again. After several years of flirtation with unscripted reality television, scripted drama is suddenly trendy again, witness the success of new shows as eclectic as the suburban melodrama Desperate Housewives, the plane crash survivor saga Lost, and the dirty, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed western series Deadwood.
Whatever it is, or turns out to be, America's television executives are wildly excited about it. This week, NBC snapped up the rights to his new series, variously known as Studio 7 or Studio 7 on the Sunset Strip, which the network hopes to air towards the end of next year.The premise sounds much like the long-running hit Saturday Night Live, with its parade of comics alternating between brilliance and nervous breakdown, its producers veering dangerously between the narcissistic satisfactions of their outsize egos and blank insecurity, and with the sense hanging over all of them that no matter what they do they are somehow selling out. Sorkin is among a handful of American television writers distinctive enough to be instantly recognisable in everything he does.And what he does best is to remove the lid on a pressure-cooker situation - be it in politics, broadcasting, the law or any other field of endeavour - and explore the machinations and behind-the-scenes schemings that inform the smooth public fa?e of the endeavour.The 44-year-old writer's attention is now turning to the cut-throat world of late-night television comedy. And it was also the premise behind his critically acclaimed but shortlived series Sports Night, where the hermetic world was the studio of a television sports programme. So it comes as no surprise, perhaps, that his latest venture follows much the same model.
