TEACUP: Ian McCulloch Explains Season 1’s Short Episodic Runtimes

Peacock is bringing an adaptation of Robert McCammon’s novel, “Stinger,” to the streaming platform with the new series TEACUP.

The new series—which stars Scott Speedman, Chaske Spencer, Kathy Baker, Boris McGiver, Caleb Dolden, Emilie Bierre, and Luciano Leroux—follows “a disparate group of people in rural Georgia who must come together in the face of a mysterious threat in order to survive.”

But the eight-episode first season also includes a rarity: Most of the episodes clock in around the half-hour mark. (The show will debut two episodes weekly, kicking off with its series debut on Thursday, October 10.)

“What we wanted to do, and this was from the very beginning, was we wanted to tell a story without a lot of fat,” TEACUP showrunner Ian McCulloch explains to Give Me My Remote in the video below. “We wanted to be very economical in the way we told the story. One, for momentum’s sake. Two, so that we leave the audience wanting more. They go, ‘Wait the half an hour’s gone by, and I don’t know what happens next. I’ve got to watch the next episode.’”

The condensed time frame also led to unexpected creativity. “The limitation is a really lovely freedom,” McCulloch says. “You cannot stay in family drama mode for more than a page or two, or a minute or two of screen time, before you have to move on to thriller mode to mystery mode to horror mode. And it just gives you the freedom to get to the point quickly in a scene and move on to the next scene. And you don’t have to stay and ruminate.”

“By the time I finished writing episode 2, it felt very natural that that’s the way the world of TEACUP works,” he continues. “That it’s very spare in its storytelling.”

TEACUP, Series Premiere, Thursday, October 10, Peacock

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