Ray Romano didn’t want to make his new series Men of a Certain Age too autobiographical.
“I don’t think people would relate if I wrote about a guy whose TV show ended,” said Romano, formerly the star of long-running sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. “I mean, (Jerry) Seinfeld would be the only one who would watch.”
Seinfeld would watch religiously, though, believing it was a show made specifically for him.
“But then he’d make fun of it, because that’s his job,” Romano lamented.
Not to fear, Men of a Certain Age is meant to appeal to ALL men of a certain age, as well as to anyone who enjoys the “dramedy” genre.
Men of a Certain Age debuted on its U.S. network of origin TNT earlier this month and will make its Canadian premiere Jan. 4 on Super Channel, a pay service available through most cable and satellite providers. Given the number of inquiries we’ve received from devoted Romano fans in Canada asking for details, we’re betting there will be some Super Channel subscriptions in Christmas stockings this year.
Romano, who turns 52 on Monday, has been one of TV’s biggest stars over the past 15 years. But he has chosen to return to TV not with another sitcom, but with a show that allows him to stretch his acting muscles.
“This taps into another thing,” Romano said. “Was I going to be good at it? I don’t know. But I wanted to move on and experience it and try it.
“I don’t need to do Hamlet or anything. But I think I found a nice balance between still being an everyday guy but having a little more depth to it.”
Generally speaking, Men of a Certain Age - which also stars Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher - has been very well-received.
“I like to complain, but I can’t complain about the reviews,” Romano said. “I read a lot of them. With this damn internet, you can’t not see them.
“Out of 40 that I’ve read, 37 have been more than positive. But of the three that weren’t, two of them are ones that my mother is going to read, I swear.”
Everybody Loves Raymond wrapped up in the spring of 2005, and Romano joked that he started thinking about his next project “about six hours later.” In truth, Romano simply chilled for a few months, mulling over some movies that never worked out, but by the autumn of that year he was feeling a little like the characters in Men of a Certain Age.
“The whole premise of the show came from myself and Mike Royce (co-writer and producer on both Everybody Loves Raymond and Men of a Certain Age) saying, ‘What do we want to do next?’ ” Romano said.
“Coming off the success of Raymond - which was life-changing - it magnifies the question of what’s next, you know what I mean? So we were in this area where a lot of guys are for other reasons, and we thought, ‘Let’s write about this.’ ”
The trek from concept to consummation was arduous, however.
“First it was, ‘Let’s write a movie, let’s write a TV show, let’s do this, let’s shop it around, what’s our idea?’ ” Romano recalled. “We started developing it for HBO, but then the powers that be changed and it kind of got lost there.
“Then it was at TNT, but the writers’ strike hit, and we lost nine months. Then back on, and it was planned for January (2009), then June, then moved all the way to December.
“So it was three years. It was like were doing Schindler’s List all of a sudden. I was like, ‘Come on, this is just a show about guys walking on a hill.’ ”
Rest assured, Men of a Certain Age is about more than that.
bill.harris@sunmedia.ca
Happy about later Canadian debut
Ray Romano sees the Canadian delay as an opportunity.
His new series Men of a Certain Age debuted on TNT in the U.S. earlier this month, but it won’t arrive in Canada till Jan. 4, on Super Channel.
“Well, that’s good, because by then we’ll have it right,” Romano said. “(The episodes) already are locked in, but somehow they’ll get better with age in the new year. We’ll polish them up and get the kinks out.
“You know what, in 2009 the (Canadian) public is not ready for it ... 2010, that’s my year.”
Speaking of being ready for something, Romano fans will have to wrap their brains around the concept that Men of a Certain Age is not a sitcom, a la Everybody Loves Raymond, but rather a “dramedy.” Interestingly, two of Romano’s co-stars from Raymond - Patricia Heaton (wife Debra) and Brad Garrett (brother Robert) - have plunged back into the sitcom genre with The Middle and ’Til Death, respectively.
“Oh yeah, (The Middle) is doing well, (Heaton) is doing good,” Romano said.
“Brad Garrett? Ah, he’s having trouble,” Romano added with a laugh. “But he’s okay. I saw him last night, we played poker together, he’s doing great.”
