EUREKA - BUDDY TV: Producer Amy Berg Talks About TV, Obsessions and Comic-Con
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
by Laurel Brown
Comic-Con is coming! And BuddyTV will be there.
This year we are sponsoring a panel at the San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, July 21. The panel, "Obsession: How TV and Movies Go from Fascination to Phenomenon," will feature a host of television writers, actors and more. One of our esteemed panelists is Amy Berg, the co-executive producer of Eureka and a former supervising producer of Leverage.
We asked Berg about her television work, her experiences at Comic-Con and some of her own obsessions...
... Q: What do you think is necessary to create fan obsession for television shows?
Amy Berg: "You need characters who resonate with viewers, whether it's because they relate to them personally or are merely charmed by them. And you need to build interesting relationships between them. A lot of viewers root for a romance between two leads... like with Mulder and Scully or Crichton and Aeryn or Lee and Starbuck. And as writers we embrace that, we tease it. The question of "will they or won't they" has kept lots of shows on the air, perhaps even after they've otherwise expired.
But for me, romances are rarely the most interesting relationships on a show. What hooked me on a show like Battlestar Galactica wasn't the potential love matches or even the space battles -- it was the father-daughter relationship between Starbuck and Adama. I remember watching the final scene in "Home" between the two of them and saying to myself, "Yep, I'm in."
Don't get me wrong, relationships aren't the only things that hook viewers. There will always be fans who are sold on concepts alone. Some will watch anything that's set on a spaceship. I'm a strong believer in simple concepts, complex characters. And I think that's why you've seen shows like Eureka succeed where other more conceptually involved shows like Caprica have failed..."
Eureka season 4.5 airs Mondays at 8/7C on Syfy.
