Stephanie Law has an excellent interview with writer-producer (and sometime TV Guidance commenter) Mark Farrell, showrunner of This Hour Has 22 Minutes and one of the developers of Corner Gas. He talks about the writing process, the things he looks for in a writer (on a topical show like 22 Minutes, it’s a writer who can get used to writing a lot of material that won’t get on the show) his new pilot “Dan For Mayor,” and the fact that, apparently, the CBC does not have a blacklist for writers who cross over to another network:

Worst advice I received: two very senior people told me that I should not work on Corner Gas (in the early days before Brent and I wrote the first 2 scripts) because it was a CTV show and CBC wouldn’t work with me (no one from CBC said this) ever again if I did. I’m not going to say who they were. And they weren’t threatening me, they were giving me what they thought was helpful advice, which obviously I ignored.

Be sure to scroll down to the comments section, where Farrell provides some additional information about the process of writing 22 Minutes.

[vodpod id=Groupvideo.2616799&w=560&h=340&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]