Angie Tribeca: The Reason Behind TBS’ 25-Hour Marathon Premiere

TBS’ new comedy Angie Tribeca is premiering all 10 of its first season episodes in an ad-free 25-hour marathon loop beginning January 17th. Recently, the creative team behind the cop comedy and its stars discussed the unusual premiere method at the Television Critics Association winter press tour.

Angie Tribeca stars Rashida Jones as the title character, a “lone-wolf detective” who is partnered with the hapless Jay Geils (Hayes MacArthur).

Speaking at the TCAs, showrunner Ira Ungerleider said the marathon idea was a surprise at first:

We were all taken aback [by the marathon rollout]; we were all surprised and had never heard of such a thing before. We tossed it around and thought it was a cool way to introduce a show. We have a lot of actor-writer-producers with a big body of work and we’ve seen all different ways of rolling out a show, … [and] it’s hard to say which way of getting your show to emerge from the clutter is the best way. When we finally embraced the idea of this binge marathon, we thought, ‘Let’s go out there and put the show out there.’ Certainly, the way we view TV today is binging. I watched 50 hours of Game of Thrones in a row. … We like to consume these things in big chunks, so you can watch in a big chunk or you can watch in pieces.”

Jones added that the comedy, executive produced by Steve and Nancy Carell, benefits from a binge-style approach:

The show really lends itself to that kind of watching: It’s a procedural; you can start anew at the beginning of every episode. There’s wall-to-wall attempted jokes in every episode. If you like that, you’re going to want more of that, and I think it’s a good way to watch the show.”

Carell later mentioned that the series originated out of an inside joke with his wife, Nancy. They had made up the name Angie Tribeca and built the character and show around that. He said the series’ comedic tone is largely inspired by earlier spoof comedies like Get Smart and Airplane!:

You hope it works. It’s tricky and it’s incredibly silly — and at the same time, an enormous amount of thought goes into it. What works and what doesn’t work, we’ll see. You have to use yourself as a barometer, and we use our own voices as a barometer. … It’s about so much more than being funny. It’s about understanding when to pull back and not have a self-awareness of being funny.”

Watch a trailer for Angie Tribeca below:

What do you think? Will you tune in to the Angie Tribeca marathon? Do you think other new series should premiere in this style?