PASADENA, California - It's a long way from the University of B.C. to South Florida. For Hart Hanson, creator and executive producer of Bones and now the new, quirky, lighthearted caper comedy The Finder, it's just another step on the long and winding road of showbiz. In a previous life, Hanson lectured in creative writing at UBC. But there's teaching and then there's, well, doing.
The Finder, starring Geoff Stults, Mercedes Masohn, Academy Award nominee Michael Clarke Duncan, and 17-year-old newcomer Maddie Hasson, is a romp about a defective detective and his wacky band of followers, hangers-on and assorted eccentrics. It debuts Jan. 12, while Bones takes a brief hiatus around star Emily Deschanel's pregnancy.
Stults's character in The Finder is a savant: He has an uncanny ability to find things, from lost dogs to missing persons, but he doesn't quite know how he does it. He has a mild case of OCD, and a major case of ADD, but other than that, he appears, from all outward appearances, to be perfectly normal. Or imperfectly normal.
Hanson, sidelined by a motorcycle accident last week, appeared via Skype before reporters at the semi-annual gathering of the TV Critics Association, while Stults, Duncan, Masohn and Hasson poked fun at his predicament and, at one point, accused him of not wearing pants.
Hanson was up for their games - at one point he showed off one hairy-ugly piece of leg on the satellite monitor - in part because The Finder is one of those "feel-good" caper comedies. It's not serious, and it's not meant to be taken as seriously as other series set in Florida, such as Dexter and CSI: Miami.
Instead, Hanson said, he wanted to craft a program that people would want to come home to watch after a long day at work, and not feel they have to channel their misery index.
"The Finder pays homage to the old P.I. shows that many of us grew up with," Hanson said.
Many of those private-investigator series - Mannix, Cannon, The Rockford Files, Magnum P.I., Banacek, McCloud, McMillian & Wife, etc. - revolved around a central character who was damaged in some way, but an expert at what he did for a living.
"It's always a great story engine to have a lead character who's never held back by social constraints," Hanson explained. "In The Finder, (Stults's character) says what he thinks. He blurts. He's insulting. And then, his sidekick" - Duncan's character - "is this decent, big-hearted man who cleans up behind him, and at the same time, keeps people from killing him.
"I think of them as being a bit like an id and a superego. Michael's character is the thinking, reflective side of the relationship. He connects with actual social situations."
There's a dark side to his protagonist's near-psychic ability, Hanson admitted. While acknowledging it, The Finder will not dwell on it, he added. It's a caper show, not a psychoanalytical character study.
"The negative side of his ability is that, if he doesn't find something, they all agree that it could either kill him or put him in the loony bin. They differ about how to deal with that. Michael's character says, 'We have to help him find everything, and we can't let him take any jobs where it's impossible.' Mercedes' character would prefer that he go and get proper help. Those attitudes will inform the whole series. Do we go to the dark side? Yes, we do. But it will happen within the wider tone of the show.
"It's one of the quandaries that will come up in our initial 13 episodes: What will happen if he doesn't find what he's looking for? And that will happen."
Hanson briefly toyed with the idea of setting his story closer to home - in B.C.'s Gulf Islands, or on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, but the network was drawn to the idea of South Florida's blue skies, Everglades and offshore coral islands. Florida, too, is a state where dodgy personalities often relocate to reinvent themselves.
The one constant was that The Finder's characters hang out in a bar called The Ends of the Earth, and Hanson knew that, wherever The Finder was eventually set, it needed to be in a place that's on the margins of the continent.
"We needed a place that's far from the world but close to a city," Hanson explained. "The Gulf Islands did appeal to me, I will say. There's no place as odd as that. Islands are weird places, places where failed utopias try to set up create these wonderful, great communities.
"The network just responded - I think, in retrospect, quite rightly - to the blue skies and quirkiness of Florida."
Hanson paused, then quipped: "That was along way of saying, 'Yes,' and I'm not even on painkillers right now."
The Finder may sound like a flat title for such a quirky show, but, as Hanson admitted, it was the best they could come up with at the time.
"It was the classic case of the temporary title where no one comes up with a better one. I should have a better story for that, right, guys? But we didn't come up with a better title. And, boy, we went through a hundred."
Some of the rejects: "Lost and Found. The Locator, which sounded to me like a real-estate show. I remember spending 45 minutes on a network phone call, debating Finder vs. The Finder.
"You know what I wanted? I wanted Cougar Town, but the network said no."
The Finder debuts Thursday, Jan. 12 on Global TV and FOX.
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