All News is Good News for THE CONNERS When They Incorporate Real Political Headlines into Unique Live Episode Tuesday on CTV

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Bruce Helford, executive producer and showrunner for CTV’s THE CONNERS, has always loved the concept of sitcoms doing live shows, but not merely for the sake of them being live. With THE CONNERS set to air a live episode on Tuesday, Feb. 11 – technically two of them, one for the East at 8 p.m. ET, and one for the West at 8 p.m. PT – Helford stressed the need to come up with a unique idea. “What I always say is, guys, it’s not enough just to do it live, because then people are just waiting for somebody to flub a line,” Helford said. “There’s nothing inventive about that. There has to be a good reason for it to be live.” Well, Helford and the team behind THE CONNERS certainly have found a good reason, and a unique idea, as their live episode is airing on the same night as the New Hampshire Primary. Live news from the Primary will be incorporated into the show. “It’s an episode of THE CONNERS, but whenever we’re in the living room, Mark, the youngest son (played by Ames McNamara), is going to be doing a report on the New Hampshire Primary for school,” Helford explained. “But he’s actually going to be watching the live news. So when people come into the living room, they’re going to say, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ And he’s going to tell them, and then they’re going to discuss it a little bit.” Helford pointed out that THE CONNERS has never been a political show, but sometimes politics enter the fray naturally, particularly when it comes to how working-class families are impacted. “So I said, shouldn’t we see what this family thinks about the election?” said Helford, referring to the U.S. Presidential election, coming up in November. “But we’re only going to be in production through the first week of March. So if we’re going to do something, it has to be in February, and February is when the New Hampshire Primary is happening. So let’s have this family react to that, and let’s do it in real time. It wasn’t so much about, ‘Let’s just create a crazy thing.’ It’s more about, ‘What’s going to be something that’s organic and honest and makes for good television?’ That’s really where this came from.” Even though THE CONNERS regularly tapes in front of a live studio audience, Helford described the process of doing a live show as “massively different” from the normal routine. “We’ll have to cue the actors when things are going to be changing, and they don’t have that normal downtime between scenes,” he said. “We have places in the script where we believe that Mark is going to be talking about what’s happening on TV, or someone’s going to come into the room. But we have no idea what’s going to be happening on the news at that moment, which is what the actors will be commenting on. So the actors will have to be prepared to do a little improv. We’ll talk a little bit about what kinds of things might happen, but we can’t prepare them in any real way.” So with all that in mind, who does Helford think is going to knock it out of the park in this live setting? “We’ve got Laurie Metcalf and John Goodman and Sara Gilbert and Lecy Goranson, and any one of them can make me laugh in person, and come up with something sharp,” Helford said. “And, you know, Katey Sagal is on the show, too, and Jay Ferguson, so we have quite a group. But I’m also looking at Ames, the actor who plays Mark. He has a particularly difficult role for a 12-year-old boy. He’s the point man. He’s the one who’s going to have all the information, and what he finds interesting is what he will mention. I’m really looking forward to him being the guy who has to keep the train running. That’s going to be fun.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv