In the interest of building a portfolio of writing,I’ve been working on specs for a couple of TV shows. The goal is to finally seek out an agent and make a concerted effort to break into TV writing here in Toronto.

The first show I tackled was The Big Bang Theory,which turned out to be much more fun to write than I expected. The characters are great for a classic sitcom and silliness still allows for a reasonable dose of intelligence.

Now on the computer,I am breaking some ideas for a spec of the series Castle. Procedural dramas are a fixture of network programming and seem to be a must for the spec file. Castle follows a long line of writer turned crime solver series,more Remington Steele than Murder She Wrote. While the research behind the work is a definite downer —nothing like reading about murder cases to lower one’s faith in humanity —but the series has a buoyant energy rooted in witty banter that will be fun to write.