Monday, March 29, 2010

Two Single Images

Monday Cartoon Day.

Last week the third season of 'my' comedy series S1ngle started on the Dutch Net 5 network. I put the possessive pronoun between quotes, because these things ar always done together with other people and in this case, this is particulary true. S1ngle was already a succesful newspaper strip when my writing partner Wim Bax suggested that I should use my 25 year old relationship with it's authors Hanco Kolk and Peter de Wit to turn it into a television series. Wim and I devised a concept and took it to the producer, FourOne Media, who suggested we team up with producer/director and former casting mogul Job Gosschalk. Job took on the project as a showrunner, delivered a great cast and in the end directed 28 of the 32 episodes. He also lead us in plotting the series, after which Wim wrote the episodes and I suggested rewrites. When I got ill last year Job and Wim took over completely and finished off the series while I was living it up in hospital. So to say that I am now watching the episodes with mixed feelings is an understatement. I am feeling pride for the accomplishments of everyone involved, humbleness (if there is such a word), joy at the success of it all and an intense desire not to talk about it too much.

This week, it was also announced that the series will be running on the new Sixx network in Germany and that negotiations are underway to bring the serie to America. Like Net 5, Sixx is a network aimed at females and it wouldn't surprise me if S1ngle wound up on Lifetime on of these days.

To celebrate, I have here the first two pages of a six page article Hanco Kolk did for a Dutch weekly. It shows off the series and the three actrices playing the main characters as well as Hanco's wonderful style. The other pages told the story of how the series was sold, but they were a bit more difficult to translate without ruining the art (which is also why I let the Dutch head of the article intact). I still might do so at a later date, if only to show Hanco's sympathetic caricatures of me, Job and Wim.


4 comments:

Mike Lynch said...

Wonderful to hear that maybe, possible we'll see the series in the States.

Ger Apeldoorn said...

Well, it'll be a remake and we all know how those fare (apart from All In The Family and The Office and Three's Company and who knows what else).

Joakim Gunnarsson said...

With a possible english version we might even be able to get it here in Sweden sooner or later.
Hmm, I can't think of any show from the netherlands running on any Swedish channel. You should get those sales agents on their feets trying to pitch it in scandinavia. :)

Let's hope for international success, and a truckload of money to you in royalties. :)

Ger Apeldoorn said...

Unfortunately, Big Brother is a Dutch concept... not only, because it launched a hausse of reality shows, but it also meant that for years every Dutch tv producer couldn't be persuaded to try and sell a simple little comedy such as mine abroad, since they were only looking for Big Brother size hits.