I’m feeling a little sad for you right now because there’s a good chance you’re never going to see my favourite pilot of the year. Sabbatical created and written by Peter Mitchell is not just a perfect little piece of screenwriting, it’s also the foundation for what could be a creepy and story-rich television series that I really want to watch.
I got to talk to Pete for quite a while at a recent screening of Sabbatical in Toronto and was struck by the depth of his knowledge of every aspect of making a series. Not only does he know his craft, he knows his show. Even though Sabbatical never got the green light after the pilot was made, Pete knew a tremendous amount about each character and the story lines that would have arced out through the first season and beyond. Every twist, turn and beat he told us about was juicy and engaging.
I think that is one of the keys to why Sabbatical works so well. Pete knows his world and he knows his characters. He also has chops out the wazoo and writes beautiful dialogue that rings true.
Sabbatical is the pilot for an arced series about a family that moves to a small town in the Alberta badlands so the mother can pursue her dream job on a dinosaur dig. Everything bad and creepy that can happen, does.
The pilot is written in five acts. Acts one, two and four each have eight sequences. The third is quite short with just three sequences. Five has nine sequences.
The act breaks are not cliff-hanging moments in the storyline. Instead, they tend to be moments at the end of sequences that bring new revelations about characters. The father is capable of very strong emotions. The friendly earthy next door neighbour shows Gwyneth a vicious side. The nice Reverend has some startling ideas about what happened next door. These are very effective curtains because they get you wondering about the characters and wanting to know more.
The episode sets in motion at least eight storylines that could carry through the season.
The statement of theme is right there at the expected moment. I look for it around the 30 minute mark in a 44 minute show. And there it is at 34:05: “Everyone has a place at the table here: God, the devil, now science.”
I’d argue that the first act is actually a very long tease because it is a journey that takes the characters from their previous lives into the new world that will be the series. It’s classic mythic structure, taking us deeper and deeper into the unknown and as it turns out this is a road of trials.
We begin with normalcy: a family of four in a car on a rural highway on a bright sunny day. Maybe five lines of dialogue in the action begins and comes fast and furious. A tire blow out, an 18-wheeler that nearly blows them off the road, the young son disappears and then turns up in danger, a creepy truck driver comes on to the teenage daughter. We’re only a few minutes in and the tension is incredibly high. We are totally engaged with the family and on the edge of our seats.
The family stops for the night at a dingy motel. Caleb, the creepy truck driver is staying there too. Gwyneth, the rebellious teenage daughter sneaks out into the growing darkness to go talk to him. The parents watch nervously caught in the bind of the parents of teenagers — to interfere or not to interfere, because interference with a teen almost always backfires. As they watch, Gwyneth climbs into the truck and even though she doesn’t see the handcuffs that we see, she freaks out and hurries back to the motel. Her parents heave a sigh of relief.
And so do we. Nothing bad has really happened. A few almosts but it’s really all okay. It seems like a good moment for a little character development.
Julie and Patrick — the parents — engage in some lighthearted banter which turns into a steamy sex scene. This might be a married couple with a great relationship — just one more reason to like them and the show. After all the tension of the opening moments of the show, the scene is welcome. A bit of comedy would have cleared the tension, let you breathe easy. But a sex scene keeps you on the edge of your seat and demands a different sort of heightened attention than the scenes of danger that preceded it — but a heightened attention nonetheless. So while the scene functions nicely to distract you it doesn’t release you from the emotional grip that the show now has on you.
And that grip only tightens when you see that truck driver Caleb at the motel window about to break into the kids’ motel room. The teenage daughter lies asleep and vulnerable, but Mitchell has a twist up his sleeve that escalates the danger. Caleb isn’t after the daughter, but the young autistic son. Just as he’s about to grab him, Patrick flies out of nowhere and wrestles him to the ground. Patrick’s reaction is violent to the point of brutality. How else would a man react when a stranger breaks in and threatens his family? Yet the intensity of his emotion leaves us feeling that there is a lot more to Patrick than we’ve seen so far; a hidden vein of emotion that will yield some great story.
That’s a first act that makes you want to invest in a full season. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg — a very juicy satisfying episode follows. We haven’t even gotten to the heart of the story that was to form the spine of the series; the town where the family is spending Patrick’s sabbatical. And characters”
I’m going to stop mourning for Sabbatical now because I hear Pete’s going to be running another series and when it airs, we can watch that together and be happy.
But if you do get a chance to see Sabbatical grab it. It’s great. And I bet the script makes an amazing read.
Frank Dillon
those are very kind words Jill, thank you so much and I am very glad that you enjoyed it.
Frank Dillon
one of the reasons that Caleb twist works so well is that i didn’t know he was going to do it until i got him in the room.
the first act of the story you described came about because the network consensus was that “we got to the town too fast” so i wrote the journey to town as an homage to old slasher films like “the hills have eyes” and figured a creepy trucker was always good for a little apprehension as it played into the whole creepy trucker underage girl thing that worked in “freeway(?) — that wacked out retelling of little red riding hood.
because i knew that, in later episodes, the little boy was going to become the focus of the bad guys in the story so when caleb crawled into the window he just started going for the little boy instead of the girl. while that surprised me i went with it and it did double duty by being a misdirect while giving the scene a little sicko pedo twist (never a bad thing in a story like this). the minute he did that i knew that he was going to turn out to be the reverends son and the trucker then became a key continuing character in the first half of the first season of the series.
as an aside, the major complaint i got from the network after we finished the pilot was that “it took too long to get to town”.
admin
First, I laughed out loud at sick-pedo twist.
Second, I remember the first time I worked with characters who had minds of their own. It was a kids’ series created by the late great Don Arioli and I had a few freelance scripts. I was stunned when the characters insisted on saying and doing things that I hadn’t planned out because up till that point every writing experience I’d had had involved shoving the characters around and putting word into their mouths in order to achieve my ends. I had no idea that characters could be so well drawn that you didn’t have to force them to do things. One of Don’s characters lived in a closet and every time I let him out, he’d talk so much and steal the limelight that I would have to scramble to shove him back in there so I could keep the story moving.
But the point here, because we always have to keep coming back to my blatant hero worship, is that well made characters do know what they want to do — independent of the writer or even their creator. It takes a skilled writer to create characters of that depth and then to trust the characters to do what they must.
Third, as to the network note about it taking too long to get to town, as I mentioned in the post, the episode follows a very classic literary structure. Did they tell Joseph Conrad it took too long to get up river into the Heart of Darkness? Or Frank L Baum that he should have started the story in Oz?
Bill Cunningham
Jill – off topic but I wanted to send you congrats on being elected to the WGC.
They are lucky to have you fighting for them.
Best wishes from your mad pulp bastard,
B
Chani Beynon
Why only show one episode? Talk about a tease!!! It’s like giving a blind person a glimpse and saying “huh! that’s all you get!!!” I don’t understand why Sabbatical would air only once? It was AWESOME! Finally!, a show that is so incredibly eerie and mysterious. It definitely leaves you wanting more. How unfair to air one episode and then leave us hanging. Please bring this back to television. Or at least write a book so we can get the whole story. I honestly think this could have been one of the best tv series of all time! It’s so very disappointing!
CB