Regarding Richard Compton, what we'd like to do is to bring him on as a
director-producer, as is done, for instance, in a lot of the Bochco shows.
Such a person directs every third episode, and works with the other directors
to *insure* a continuity of vision, consistency in the look of the film and
the performance of the characters, and generally making sure all goes
smoothly, taking full advantage of all the stuff that a marginal outsider
might not know about. I'm a bit of a continuity-bug, and that has been shown
to be a remarkably efficient way of keeping it all together.

Regarding the arcs...the best way I can explain it is that every other
episode will be used to propel the five year storyline (that's a rough
estimate; sometimes it'll be two in a row, or one in three, but you get the
idea). This means that half of our shows in any given season are developed by
outsiders, in the select group we'll be using, and that will help to keep us
fresh and open to new ideas.

The way it'll work is something like this: you set something up in
episode 7, for instance, and then pay it off in episode 13. But you do so in
a way that incorporates the information passed along in #7, so that if you
missed #7, you can still follow the story.

I've always believed in the importance of challenging oneself; and I've
tried to do it on everything I've written, books, stories and TV. This is
probably the most textured approach to TV storytelling that I've ever tackled,
requiring scale and subtlety at the same time. What you end up doing is
telling your A story, your B story, and giving people the thread of a C story
without them KNOWING they're being given a third story...then paying off the
3rd story, the C story, without making people think they've missed something
in case they didn't pick up on anything the first time out.

From a creative perspective, it's kind of like juggling chainsaws,
playing a kazoo and frying eggs, all at the same time...for five years.

jms