Saviours of “The Specials”

On the way home on the train, feeling a bit squiffy thanks to a evening of beer, Katy got an email from someone called Carolyn Strauss. The email said she wanted to speak to us about “The Specials”. When we looked Carolyn up we couldn’t believe it — as the head of HBO Entertainment, she had commissioned all our favourite shows, from the Wire and the Sopranos to Sex and the City and and was now Executive Producing “Game of Thrones”! We drifted back to the London on the train on a cloud of drunken wonder!

A few days later we had a telephone conversation with Carolyn who was absolutely lovely. She told us that herself and D.B. Weiss (the creator of “Game of Thrones”), had been watching “The Specials” while editing their show and loved it. They wanted to talk to us about getting “The Specials” on to TV!

Soon after we met Carolyn & Dan in London to discuss if our 10 minute webisodes could be turned into half hour episodes for television. We all thought it could be done. Next plan was to find a network that would like to take the show. This process took a while and ended up involving Rosie O’Donnell who had also become a fan of “The Specials”. Rosie sent our trailer to Oprah Winfrey and all of a sudden we got another mind-blowing email: Oprah was up for it. It was ‘go go go!’ Needless to say the guys had been following these developments closely and were overjoyed when we told them they were going to be on television in the USA!

Next up we had a conversation with Sheri Salata, the president of Oprah’s network OWN. She was also wonderful and stressed that OWN were ready to offer us the support we needed. In the end, we agreed to license the series to OWN, not sell it, so we could ensure the series would continue to be available to all our fans across the world. It wasn’t our smartest decision financially but it has turned out for the best, as here we are now launching both series online for you all to see!

Making Season 2 and recutting Season 1 with the support of Carolyn, Dan, Rosie, Oprah and Sheri (who all became Executive Producers on the show) was amazing. We were nervous that our new collaborators might want to change the series, but in fact they were as protective of “The Specials” as we were. They were equally determined that the guys continue to do their own voiceover despite the challenges of understanding them (particularly with the additional complication of British accents). In fact they hardly ever asked for any changes, but when they did, they improved the show. For example, they asked us to extend the scene where Lewis and Megan are on a date in episode 2 of Season 1. We had a look and added more footage of Lewis struggling to talk to Megan and we think it’s better now than in the web series.