UPDATE (11/19/23): Hocking Hills is now Everly Heights. I’ll keep this page up for historical reasons, but visit the official Everly Heights website for up-to-date info and ways to get involved.
GENRE: Sitcom
LOGLINE: To save his marriage, a seasoned government agent breaks protocol by bringing home a wizard from another dimension, revealing his greatest secret to his bride.
Read Nosloo the Great here: https://hockinghillsscripts.com/portfolio/nosloo-the-great-sci-fi-sitcom/
I’ve always loved the “we’ve got a secret” flavor of sitcom. A family uniting to deceive the neighbors/government agents/business rivals was always fun to watch. Will this be the week the Hendersons lose Harry? Can Samantha erase Mr. Tate’s memory before he reveals her witchcraft to the world? Secrets create a compelling dramatic situation, which fosters a fertile breeding ground for character-based comedy.
In Nosloo the Great, Jim Colvin has one whopper of a secret: He’s a high muckety-muck for of an interdimensional government agency called W.E.I.R.D.E. (Weaken and Eradicate InteR-Dimensional Enemies). His new wife Ramona thinks he works for the IRS. Jim thinks Ramona is cheating on him, but it’s projection. He feels guilty over his secret, so he projects his guilt onto Ramona.
The whole situation was inspired by a personal experience several years ago. I was attending a professional event and was the victim of an attack that was quite unprofessional. This attack left me with so much guilt and shame that I kept it a secret from everybody, even my wife. It was a dumb choice, and over the next few months, a deep distrust grew in my heart. If I was keeping this HUGE THING a secret, what kind of secrets could my wife be keeping from me? Classic projection. Eventually, I broke down, cried, came clean, and got therapy to get myself and my marriage back on track. We’re a stronger team now than we were before, but I still regret not trusting my wife when I ran into trouble.
Considering that, my impulse was to make Jim a hero who comes to his senses and shares his secret. By the second draft, I realized solving the BIG PROBLEM of your series by the end of the pilot doesn’t make for a compelling sitcom premise. Through the drafting process, Jim Colvin morphed from the hero who comes clean into a morally gray supporting character who clings to his secrets. By the end of the story, you might see him as a villain. That’s intentional. Nosloo and Jim’s wife Ramona are the characters you should root for.
If you read the first two pages you can probably guess who I based Nosloo on. My favorite “we’ve got a secret” sitcom was ALF on NBC. I was a little kid when it came out and fell in love with the corny alien from Melmac. I even had a talking ALF doll!
I modeled Very Special (where Noslo first appeared) on Family Ties. His two-page scene as the “mentor next door” in Very Special was so electric on the page I knew I had to give him his own show. I modeled Nosloo on ALF. I even read Nosloo with a “surfer ALF” impression during tables reads.
ALF was a Catskills-era comedian who landed in the 1980s, so I decided to update the model for my dark troll wizard Nosloo by using 90s prop comic Carrot Top as the jumping-off point. His presence in the script got shaved down, but Nosloo is still prone to building wacky “inventions” that offer a clever pun without solving the problem at hand. If only his magic worked in this realm…
Jim’s work life at W.E.I.R.D.E. is modeled on my favorite sitcom workplace: The writer’s room on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Bucky is inspired by Buddy. Susie is inspired by Sally. Commander Postal is inspired by Mel, the bald brother-in-law of Alan Brady. That’s not to say I lifted these characters whole-cloth. At most, they were beloved inspirations.
As a lifelong fan of the DC Comics multiverse, it was a thrill to play with a team of world jumpers. I let my imagination run wild creating fun scenarios. Waterworld World and the Plant People are personal favorites. I have a list of crazy multiverse ideas I’ve been curating since I first read Crisis on Infinite Earths, so if Nosloo gets more episodes expect some large-scale multiverse madness.
So what’s the Nosloo the Great formula? 1 part ALF, 1 part fantasy, 2 parts multi-verse, with a dash of personal tragedy for flavor. If that sounds like a dish you’d enjoy, read it at the link.
Read Nosloo the Great
http://HockingHillsScripts.com is a collection of TV pilots and screenplays I’ve developed to showcase my strengths as a writer and build a branded portfolio of my work.
Find out more about Hocking Hills Scripts here: https://billmeeks.com/introducing-hocking-hills-scripts/