‘The Good Cop’ Creator Andy Breckman: Netflix Refers To His Show As “Their Experiment”

Andy Breckman is a comedy writer through and through. Before he co-created Monk in 2002, he was best known for writing for the early days of Late Night With David Letterman and for many contributions to Saturday Night Live, among other shows. But after he learned the art of the light mystery series — and Tony Shalhoub won a raft of Emmys for playing Adrian Monk — Breckman wanted to try it again.

With Netflix’s The Good Cop, he’s found the formula to keep writing those mysteries he loves: Tony Caruso (Tony Danza), a corrupt cop just out of prison, moves in with his straight-laced NYPD detective son T.J. (Josh Groban). Both are hurting after the recent death of Tony’s wife and T.J.’s mom, who they both think was murdered. But the episodes are more procedural in nature, showing Tony and T.J. figuring out complex mysteries with the help of an ensemble that includes Tony’s former parole officer — and new detective — Cora Vasquez (Monica Barbaro).

It’s definitely different than the usual Netflix drama formula — procedural, light in tone, no nudity or major swearing. It’s essentially a basic cable show on a streaming service, to the point where Breckman says that Netflix calls it an “experiment”. Decider talked to Breckman about adapting the Israeli series for American audiences, why he likes family-friendly drama, and the mistake he made with Monk that he vowed not to repeat this time around.

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DECIDER: The Good Cop was an Israeli show; what made you interested in redoing it for the American audience?

ANDY BRECKMAN: Well, Monk was sort of a going to school for me. It took me eight years but I taught myself how to write these light, one-hour mystery procedurals, and I didn’t want that education to go to waste. You know? It’s kind of like spending three hundred grand and going to college. You want to use this degree. So I was looking for another vehicle where I could write, which would allow me to create a similar in tone, but with different characters. A light mystery with these playful puzzle, mystery puzzles that I love to create.

My agent sent me a few episodes from the first season of the Israeli series. And I loved the characters so much. They were irresistible. And I began to think of ways to use these characters in a one-hour format. I took some liberties and dropped a few characters and changed a few of the specifics but I pretty much folded the Israeli characters into my formula.

How did you have to fold and change it into your formula?

Well, the Israeli one, [Tony Jr.] was a uniformed cop. I wanted to do murder investigations and build my episodes on that. That was a big change. He also had an ex-wife and a son, and I thought that would kind of clutter up what I wanted to do, because I wanted to devote a lot of my energy and screen time to solving the puzzle. My philosophy when creating these shows is to have as few moving parts as possible. So I try to keep things very simple and strip it down, and that’s what I did but I kept the essence and the flavor of the Israeli show.

I met the creators; they’re two young brothers and I was thrilled that they liked what we did and gave us their blessing.

But the idea that Josh’s character plays by the rules almost to a fault… Was that part of the Israeli version?

To some degree, yes. I maybe strengthened that part of his character. The father in the first season of the Israeli version, [the younger cop] did have a ne’er-do-well hustler father that was always complicating his life and that was part of the formula that I used.

Now there is a rumor going around and I know that you addressed it is that Big Tony was supposed to be Tony Shalhoub, who starred in Monk. But it seems like the role fits Tony Danza very well.

I can’t imagine anyone else doing it. Before I wrote the script, before I started writing as I always do, I called Tony [Shalhoub] what his availability was, that was before I even put the first sentence on the paper. And he was already committed to Amazon [on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel] and also to he was already working on a Broadway show, so he was not available. But as soon as it was written, Netflix called and suggested Tony Danza. He was the only name ever floated. And I knew it couldn’t be a sweeter fit than that.

What made you think of Josh for T.J.? We’ve seen him act before, and we’ve see him do things like host Live with Kelly and Ryan and be funny, but we’ve never seen him as series regular carrying half the lead role.

I don’t know if other showrunners do this but what I do when I’m considering someone is I look at their reel first of course. In this case, Josh had a very short reel. It’s true. He didn’t have a long resume, but then I also look at their appearances on talk shows, and they’re doing shows like Kelly and the morning shows, and I kind of want to get a feel for who they are as people, and if you look at Josh Groban being interviewed, he’s the character. He’s earnest and open-hearted and funny and sharp and a little bit buttoned down but also a little bit surprising and subversive in other ways. He’s exactly that guy.

A little schlubby, too.

Yeah, exactly but irresistibly sweet and smart and he was my guy and it was a little bit of a leap of faith of course because he had never carried a show but it felt like such a perfect fit, and anyone that sees the show would agree, they can’t imagine anyone else. Those qualities, the earnestness and the open-heartedness, they can’t be faked at the end of the day. And, he’s not faking it. It’s just great. The same is true with Tony Danza.

Did the idea of looking at talk show appearances stem from your experience with writing for Letterman and SNL?

Maybe, that’s a good observation. I guess I just trust my gut about you know getting a feel for people. It’s kind of like the guy, I’m blanking on the name of the guy who wrote Blink and The Outliers. Those books. Who wrote those books? I’m now blanking.

Malcolm Gladwell.

Yeah, Gladwell. You know him and his theory of course is that people make snap judgements about situations or strangers in a millisecond. You’re doing it every day a thousand times an hour. And you know, like everyone else I trust my gut. And, that’s true, when you’re flipping channels and you see a guest on a talk show even if it’s someone that’s never seen before, I think within just a few seconds, you know, you’re reacting to that sort of thing. I hear that Woody Allen. That’s how he casts people. He asks his casting director for clips from talk shows. And that’s how he always casts as well. I don’t know how common he is but it’s the method I like.

When you went to pitch this, did you pitch it around to different places or was it that Netflix was the first and they took it, because this seems to be a bit of a different drama for them?

It certainly is. I assumed it was a network show. In fact, CBS made a bid for it. They were interested in it as well but when Netflix responded positively, I was very, very interested. You know they creatively made an offer that was hard to refuse. I like the idea of doing only 10 episodes cause I am sort of a control freak and it allows you to do more quality control. I’m more hands-on, maybe than I would be at a network. And also, I like the idea of no commercial interruptions. The package they offer, being launched in 140 different countries on the same day, that was exciting of course. It’s understandable why artists and writers and actors are attracted to that platform.

Did you purposely say and you said to your writers room, listen, we’re going to write this as if it is a basic cable show like a USA Network show like Monk was, 42-45 minutes, with minimal cursing? Was there ever a temptation to change some things because you had more creative freedom because it was Netflix?

It’s a good question. The length of the episodes, 42-43 minutes, that was a mandate from Netflix. And that actually surprised me but it worked out great creatively. I think it was maybe the budget factored into that. You know, if we had gone an hour, we would have needed another day or two to shoot each one. And they bought the episodic structure of the series. They considered it an experiment. They wanted to see how their subscribers would react to a more traditional, episodic format. So this was something that Netflix and I agreed on from the beginning.

The family-friendly tone of the show, I like to say to my writers, we don’t want to make Nanna uncomfortable. Nanna is on the couch, watching this with us. In part, that reflects my sensibility. I did grow up on those shows, you know the procedural shows in the sixties and seventies. And I always loved that tone and the restraint that they showed and in part, it’s a strategic move, I believe that’s a lane we had to ourselves. Wvery other show was going very dark and very twisted, and you know when they zig, we zag. It’s almost counter-programming and I wanted to offer that up to the Netflix world.

Do the restrictions help the creativity of you and your staff?

Oh my gosh. Absolutely, it’s a great observation and it does help me just knowing what the boundaries are and what the shape of the beast is going in. I wouldn’t know where to begin if it was no holds barred and anything goes and the canvas was a wide as the room. I like the very, very contained, very simple mystery puzzle. I emphasize the word puzzle, I’m telling puzzle just straight up procedural homicidal investigations. And, I like to write what Arthur Conan Doyle could have written in 1905.

The other part is that I’m very proud of Monk for a couple reasons. One is I loved hearing people telling me that they watched it with their family every week. That brought me enormous satisfaction and they were very grateful to have that show that everyone could watch together. And the other thing is Monk is still very strong in syndication and replayed very well around the world. It’s now on Amazon Prime and I believe that is in part because, it was, we worked hard to make them timeless to make them not of any era. We avoided political or topical references. Almost all pop cultural references were scrubbed. It kind of made it this other world. You know Monk lived in its own bubble and The Good Cop lives in its own slightly different bubble.

We were constantly asked about crossover episodes where other characters from USA shows visited Monk or Monk visited them but it could never work because Monk played by its own quirky rules and Tony Caruso and his son T.J. also play by their own quirky rules. They don’t quite exist on earth. It’s not quite really New York as we know it. It’s their own New York.

Well, he also works in a police unit that doesn’t really exist, so they can go all over the city.

It’s completely made up. [Laughs] The all-city homicide squad. It’s as made up as the Fantastic Four or the Avengers. We do very, very little research because we’re just telling these fantastical mystery puzzles and we’re just having fun, really.

Is the show’s format similar to Columbo, where you know who did it, and it’s just up to T.J., or Tony, or Cora to figure it out?

Yes. Columbo of course was the gold standard. And that was a completely open mystery, where you know who did it and why and how. And Colombo is just looking to find the mistake that they made. Those are my favorites. Those are the dream kind of stories for me. What we have been writing for The Good Cop is a variation of that. We do a semi-open mystery. You know who did it but you don’t know how they’re going to get caught. Or you don’t know how they did it. To me those questions are much more interesting than who did it. I’m always bored by whodunit. To me, it’s much more fun to figure out how he did it. And cracking those stories, breaking those stories is my favorite part of the process.

Was there anything that was more complex than you ever did for Monk?

Well, the process was very similar. We begin in the writers room. I get my writers together and we pretty much say, “Okay if you were going to kill me, how would you do it and get away with it?” We just plan perfect murders. A lot of shows don’t do that. A lot of shows of course have psycho-sexual serial killers on the loose or crimes of passion. But I love smart people committing premeditated murders and making one small mistake. It’s my favorite kind of mystery.

What was true then and what was true in The Good Cop is we’re always looking to write the perfect episode. The perfectly balanced episode. We begin with the mystery. We add some character beats. We add some comedy set pieces. And to get it perfectly balanced, I call it aerodynamic, these things have to fly. The wings have to be exactly the right length. And the whole thing has to be the right weight, and it just has to fly. Like a glider. You know, I don’t know if we’ve batted a thousand but that’s the fun of the process is to, is when you begin every episode and try to make this one perfectly balanced.

After the first episode you changed Cora’s character from a parole officer to a detective. Was that to get her in the office with everybody else?

That’s exactly right. I mean we quickly recognized in the writers room that we were having trouble getting a parole officer into the mysteries and we wanted her at the crime scene. We were just having trouble doing that so promoted her very quickly.

Her and T.J. seem like they’re in a will they, won’t they situation.

You know sexual tension on a TV series is a field tested concept. It’s been done a lot of times. And there is a reason they do it a lot of times because it works. Unlike Monk, who was I believe the only character on TV that wasn’t trying to get laid; it was his distinguishing characteristic. So I did want her in T.J.’s life, and I wanted them to develop their relationship and hopefully it will take them six to seven years to fully develop it. But we’ll see.

It feels like in his most recent roles, Tony Danza has proved that he can go dark but also be a character that people still root for, like he does with Big Tony. How does that factor into how you write the role?

Number one, we are talking about the most charismatic person I ever met. You know, he just oozes charm and if you see him on stage — he does a cabaret show — it’s the most attractive thing to see. He’s an irresistible force. So, that of course, you can’t fake. That you can’t learn. There is no school that teaches you that. But I did see some clips. He was in the movie called Don John and other recent movies and the Fred de Cordova [role on There’s… Johnny!. I did see some clips that showed his range and we talked about the material in the pilot where his character has a real history and some real shades to him and has taken short cuts and is ethically in a gray area for most of the show. He said he got it and I believed he did. I believe that was part of his character, you know, a part of who he was too. Because he’s lived a real life. That was part of his real life experience and he brought all of that. It rang true that he didn’t sacrifice any of his natural charm. You like the guy. He’s a bad guy with a good heart and not everybody could pull that off.

And the story of his wife and T.J.’s mom, that feels like that is going to be like the equivalent of Monk mourning his wife throughout the entire series and that story always bubbling under the procedural stories.

It’s a device that worked on the USA series; I love that device and it’s something that propels us from season to season. It’s a thread. You know I think you do need some kind of structure from season to season.

Unlike Monk though, I can tell you this: When I began Monk, I had no idea who killed Trudy. I was completely winging it. And in fact, when we had to solve that crime in season eight of Monk, when we knew the series was winding down and we had to solve the crime, I was so mad at myself at some of the details I had included in the original murder. We had to retrofit a solution. I believe when you see some other serialized TV shows, the show Lost comes to mind, you get that feeling where they didn’t know where they were going exactly. But in this show, I was determined not to make that mistake. In this show, we created a backstory for these characters and the writers and I spend time solving the [mother’s] case before we began, so I know where we were going. It’ll get to be seen if that helps me or not. You know it takes some of the fun out of it but I know where we’re going.

Hopefully we’ll fill that in slowly but surely, and hopefully we’ll have time to fill it in. I’ll tell you one thing that is real fun about knowing where the back story is, and filling in all those blanks is kind of a new experience for me. I have a secret. The writers and I know something that other people want to know. I’ve never had a secret like that. And it’s kind of fun and my kids and my wife are asking me what’s going to happen. And I’ve never kept a secret from my wife in my life; this is the only one that I’m keeping. I’m enjoying the sensation.

You structured the opens and closes of the series to aid with binge watching, with that newspaper motif. Have the folks at Netflix told you that they expect people to binge it, or are they thinking people will dip in and out of each episode, like you would with Monk?

Netflix, I can’t speak for them. They’ve occasionally referred to The Good Cop as their experiment. So I think it’s a learning curve for the network as well. I hope that when we get second season pickup, they will give me a little bit of a debriefing. I hope they will share some of that with me. Because I’m as curious as anyone. How do people watch it? How many episodes are people watching on average? Whether people are skipping back around based on the blurbs? I’m just curious as anyone. I can’t wait to find out.

They asked us to find a device that would link the episodes to each other. And we suggested [the newspaper] and they actually treated that pretty masterfully. It seems perfect. I also love that it’s a newspaper. It is such a throwback because as you and I know, no one is reading newspapers anymore. It sets the tone for the whole series pretty well, I think.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch The Good Cop on Netflix