B.Z.P.D.

Balanbrook Zoo Police Department

Tone

"Parks & Recreation" (2009) meets "Party Down" (2009) meets "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" (2013)

Logline

Several years after a public embarrassment, a decorated city cop continues her adjustment to serving and protecting a suburban zoo with a team of complacent, in-over-their-head officers in the bizarre field of zoological law enforcement.

Synopsis

Fact: The only zoo with its own police force is Chicagoland’s Brookfield Zoo. In our fictionalized town of Balanbrook, follow the men and women of BZPD as they serve and protect the guests, volunteers, staff...and creatures of their unique slice of paradise.

Jill spent her whole career trying to make detective, but after she unfortunately handed a ketchup laced hot dog to a severely tomato allergic Chicago mayor while on his detail, everything she worked for came to a crashing halt. We find her 3 years later as a sergeant in a suburban zoo. She’s the most competent one there, but also defeated. When two children go missing at the hands of an intoxicated dad, Jill gets to pull her team together to solve the first real case the zoo force has ever had.

If her hands weren’t full enough, the chase that ensued after drunk dad took off injured the beloved zoo mascot — Jazz Hands — a loud and obnoxious, yet beautiful, free-roaming peacock.

A wild-card officer tends to Jazz Hands’ veterinary treatment where he makes everything worse as the elder-most officers stay behind to welcome the new zoo director, a young, business driven executive that sees the BZPD as the eyes and ears in his goal to drive profits by exploiting families.

Underneath this silly facade is a group of people that have all had to pivot away from their dreams in some way. Our series follows these men and women as they forget the cards they wanted in exchange for the ones they were dealt in order to discover what they can accomplish amongst this strange work family in the oddest of settings.

Accolades

Happy Side Up

Tone

"It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" (2005) meets "Spaced" (1999)

Logline

On Chicago's west side, a group of underachieving roommates attempt to course correct their uncertain futures under the watchful eye of their unstable new landlord. 

Synopsis

Happy Side Up documents the momentous shift of impending adulthood that seems to be happening later and later in life for most young people. Nothing makes one grow up faster than finding your landlord dead serving as a pile of fancy feast for the neighborhood cats.  With a vacancy in the feline infested middle apartment, our story begins with the arrival of a new lord of land and Jerry Garcia look-a-like, Chianti.

Cooped up in their classic Chicago, garden, shotgun apartment, childhood best friends Rick, Darrell and Selina share the cramped space with their respective life failures: Rick’s surprising financial cut-off from his participation trophy-era parents, Darrell’s imminent downsizing from his third consecutive corporate job, and Selina’s instability in part-time hell. To make life more complicated, Rick’s twin sister and Darrell’s not-so-secret love interest, Katie, occupies the apartment on the top floor, rounding out the building’s occupancy.

Rick and Katie’s 30th birthday is the first in a line of dominoes to fall, sending our crew on a soul search to get themselves out of their rut. It is on the day of their party that we are introduced to the family/friend dynamic of our pals and how Chiani fits into it all, as well as Rick’s long-time girlfriend, Lydia. Mutually despised by the group, Lydia has the familial resources to make the group’s dream a reality; the means to open a craft brewery.

The irony is thick as our financially strapped group puts all their eggs in the basket of the saturated microbrew industry. With Rick and Katie’s excellent brew taste, Selina’s graphic design abilities, Darrell’s attention to detail and Chianti’s knack for things of questionable legality, our crew has a solid foundation that leads them on a hunt for a brewmaster while dealing with Lydia and her family. A chaotic family handling hyperbolic, yet relatable dysfunction, has friendships tested and lives that have no business being intertwined become intertwined in business. This is Happy Side Up.

Welcome to Wildflower

Tone

Parks & Recreation meets Rick & Morty…in animated 1845.

Logline

A naïve banker-turned-ambassador is forced to prepare the secluded wild west town of Wildflower for its encounter with the recently railroad connected world. 

Synopsis

Wildflower was founded by a group of Puritan-like moralists that fled the lawless town of Murder Valley, which gets its name from the out of control crow population…and its excessive homicide. This group founded Wildflower on the basis that everyone should tell the truth, which soils its roots in the town credo: “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” (Which yes, Friday Night Lights stole from Wildflower)

The town can best be described as that company that only promotes from within. Generation after generation, Wildflower grew to a point where it has plateaued like the landscape it surrounds. Getting stuck in their back-asswards ways has insured that all will be well, as long as external forces don’t work their way into the sheltered town.

The Lucky Ones

The Lucky Ones is a sketch show paying homage to That Mitchell and Webb Look and Mr. Show that is comprised of 50% taped pieces and 50% with a live studio audience. Take a look at some of the sketches we would like to include!

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