TV Talk: Offbeat humor springs from filmed-in-Pittsburgh ‘Sprung’

If you’ve been a fan of writer/director Greg Garcia’s past series — “My Name is Earl” (2005-09, NBC), “Raising Hope” (2010-14, Fox), “The Guest Book” (2017-18, TBS) — and his shows’ mix of sophomoric humor and character-driven comedy with a messy surface but heart underneath, you’re likely to get a kick out of zany, filmed-in-Pittsburgh “Sprung,” which streams its first two episodes Friday on free, ad-supported Amazon Freevee. (Subsequent episodes debut Fridays through Sept. 16).

“Sprung” re-teams “Raising Hope” stars Martha Plimpton and Garret Dillahunt, but they’re playing wildly different characters who have a different relationship.

Set at the outset of the pandemic, “Sprung” follows Jack (Dillahunt) as he gets released from prison after serving two decades for a marijuana conviction. With nowhere to go, he winds up living with his former cellmate, Rooster (Phillip Garcia, who is not related to Greg Garcia), in the home of Rooster’s piece-of-work mother, Barb (Martha Plimpton). Jack’s prison girlfriend, Gloria (Shakira Barrera), joins him there.

The quartet winds up targeting those who profited off the pandemic, including Melvin (James Earl) and his helium-voiced girlfriend Wiggles (Clare Gillies) and stock-dumping U.S. congresswoman Paula Tackleberry (Kate Walsh).

Coarse but clever comedy abounds in “Sprung,” with Plimpton stealing almost every scene as a crusty mama bear with a contorted face and a squishy core. Phillip Garcia, who’s previously been seen mostly in crime dramas, brings a dim-but-sweet demeanor to Rooster.

Greg Garcia, whose past shows were filmed in Southern California, said he was happy to relocate to Pittsburgh to film “Sprung” from late summer to early fall 2021.

“My shows don’t take place in Los Angeles so you’re struggling to find places that don’t look like Los Angeles, and it’s not always easy to do that,” he said. “At a certain point, there are palm trees in the shot so I have to think to myself, OK, it’s in Florida somewhere.”

Greg Garcia said he wanted to film “Sprung” in Frostburg, Md., where he went to college, but he needed a production center. He pointed to the Pennsylvania film tax credit as a reason Pittsburgh wound up playing the fictional Kimberton, Md., named after his wife, Kim.

“Sprung,” which was based at Tech One Office Park in Monroeville, used a private home in Coraopolis for the exterior of Barb’s house and filmed at SCI Greensburg Prison among three dozen locations throughout Western Pennsylvania.

“Sprung” marked Dillahunt’s second time working in Pittsburgh (he previously shot the 2009 post-apocalyptic film “The Road” locally) but it was a first for Plimpton, who could not restrain her enthusiasm for one shop in particular.

“I loved the Strip and I love Penzeys Spices,” she said. “It is the greatest spice store in the world. Every spice you can imagine is at Penzeys.”

Plimpton throws herself into the role of Barb, which surely makes her a better casting choice than Illeana Douglas, who Plimpton replaced as Barb after just a few days of filming.

“Ultimately [I was] in my anal-retentive writer and director mode of wanting things a certain way and we weren’t getting there,” Greg Garcia said. “The best thing to do was to find a different version of Barb.”

Greg Garcia said others who read the script before Douglas was cast asked him, “Did you write this role for Martha Plimpton?”

“So it turns out I did write it for Martha, I just didn’t know it yet,” Greg Garcia said.

Plimpton came with specific ideas for Barb and keyed into Barb’s salt-of-the-earth nature.

“She seems to really like to [have] two feet planted on the ground,” Plimpton said. “Some actors work from the inside out; I tend to go from the outside in. Also the hair, I’m a hair actor and I based that on a Disney villain that I want people to guess which one.”

(My guess: Red-headed Madame Medusa from the 1977 animated film “The Rescuers.”)

Dillahunt said while some had concerns about his on-screen reunion with Plimpton, he had none.

“People would say to me, ‘We’re not sure we want to put you two together on this, because people are gonna want Burt and Virginia [from “Raising Hope”],’” Dillahunt said. “I’m glad that we didn’t listen to those fears because it really undersells Martha’s skills.”

Greg Garcia had his idea for “Sprung” before the pandemic, with Dillahunt in mind to play a character with a mandatory minimum drug sentence.

“What do you do coming out of jail in your late 40s?” Garcia said. “Then when the pandemic hit and I saw they were letting people out of prison early, I thought maybe I can take that germ of an idea and really flesh it out.”

Although there are early-pandemic era gags in “Sprung,” including Barb smoking a cigarette through a hole in her mask, the show doesn’t dwell on the pandemic.

“You don’t want to hit it too much and you never want to make it seem like you’re making light of it either because it’s been a tragic event for so many people,” Garcia said. “So the fact that it’s early on, we can have fun with how we’re naïve about certain things and then we just use it as a backdrop.”

A hallmark of Greg Garcia’s series is his tendency to focus on middle-class and lower-class characters.

“I consumed many, many sitcoms growing up and I see what’s funny about all of them, but I was always drawn more to ‘Andy Griffith’ and ‘Roseanne’ than I was ‘30 Rock’ and ‘Frasier,’ not that I didn’t like their shows. They were great. But at the end of the day, I felt like the problems they had on ‘Roseanne’ were real problems in my eyes,” Greg Garcia said. “There are a lot more stakes involved when you’re trying to keep the electricity on.”

The series creator, who also directed every “Sprung” episode, said he shot multiple endings for “Sprung’s” first season, including a few cliffhangers. But in editing, he came up with a different ending entirely that wraps up the season — and potentially the series — in a neat bow.

“I ended ‘Earl’ on a cliffhanger [its fourth season] and it got canceled so I’ve learned my lesson,” Garcia said. “There are certainly creative ways to move forward if that’s the decision, and if it’s a limited series, there’s something to be said for that as well. We’ll just have to see what the future holds.”