By Rachel Langer for TV, eh?
I was fortunate enough to sit down with Simon Barry, the showrunner of one of my favorite new sci-fi series: Continuum. Barry has written for feature films and television in both the US and Canada. He was gracious enough to let me dissect his views on the writing room, TV in Canada, and the voracity of the science fiction fan.
You’ve written for both features and TV; can you talk about the difference in your process between those two things?
As far as movie projects go, a lot of the movie work is driven by assignments, adaptations, rewrites, and polishes, so the majority of that work tends to be, for me, taking other material and managing it into feature film mode, and it’s good work! I mean, it’s great work for developing good habits, but it’s not the most creative work because you’re working within the constraints of previous material.
Whereas for TV, from my experience (and this is probably unique for me because I haven’t worked for anyone else in TV, I’ve only ever worked either developing original ideas or executing them), I find it to be more creatively fulfilling in that sense. Not to say I don’t want to do movies — I absolutely love doing movies — but there is more on your shoulders in TV in terms of thinking everything through from not only the inception of the idea, the execution of the pilot, the planning of the series and then the management of all those other scripts, it’s a much more encompassing writer’s job.
In a movie job you can sort of be a cog in a bigger machine. In TV you’re part of the machine, so it’s a bit of a different approach. It’s the same craft, it’s just applied differently.
Continue reading Simon Barry of Continuum talks Canadian TV with Rachel Langer




