I’ve screened four episodes of one of the most anticipated new shows of 2024. It’s FOX’s latest animated comedy series Grimsburg. Detective Marvin Flute (voiced by Jon Hamm) returns to a quirky small town to solve murder after murder — hoping to avoid it himself — with lots of laughs and surprises along the way. The Pilot episode airs this Sunday January 7th at 8pm, right after an NFL doubleheader. Grimsburg then moves to its regular timeslot on Sunday February 18th at 9:30pm. Showrunner Chadd Gindin joins me for this new Animation Scoop Q&A. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: This is a show about a detective, Marvin Flute (voiced by Jon Hamm), who comes back to Grimsburg. Early on he says he doesn’t play by the rules. But what rules did you have to establish as far as the universe of this show?

Chadd Gindin: That’s a great question. We wanted to make sure it was weird and eerie but it didn’t go too far. There have to be some things that tie it back to a little sliver of reality. We wanted to keep a toe on the ground, so that when you build the craziness around it, it doesn’t just feel like you’re pulling stuff out of a grab bag.

JM: The first episode establishes everything, and then with the next episodes I saw (including number two), go into genre episodes [with] takes on the murder mystery premise. The self-irreverent humor of the second episode is about an ongoing murder mystery with the limited documentary crime series aspect — you automatically jump into that and it feels natural. That’s a very clever episode.

CG: Thank you. What we found over Season 1, and even on Season 2, is that the genre episodes are great for us. That’s what works. There’s still character stuff going on within those but you’re using that as the framework. That is what’s helpful in this world of him being a detective and setting it in this world. “Let’s explore these types of stories and see how we can bend them to what we want to do comedically.” That’s where it works best. It allows us to spoof things people are somewhat familiar with, while also trying to tell an emotional story about a father and son or a woman who can’t make friends. Those genre episodes are fun and there’s more of them to come.

JM: Oh yes. Camp horror. Agatha Christie. And many more. Looking forward to them. And you’re right — there’s a core emotional element of a father and a son wanting to reconnect and [figuring out] “How do we get there exactly?” The ways you go at that are pretty real — just wanting to spend time with each other.

CG: Yeah. I love jokes. Jokes are great. I think if you just put jokes on television… and there’s a world for that too… What we wanted to do on this show is find a way to have something to hang those jokes on that you could feel. That you could, at the end of the day, go, “Wow.” To have a moment at the end of, “How do an ex-wife and an ex-husband deal with raising a son still?” Those are small little things but I do think they help carry us over and keep us from just being a show that’s just there to make you laugh. If we can tell a good story along the way, that, for me, is where we hit our bullseye.

JM: I could tell, in listening to Jon Hamm’s voice performance in the four episodes I’ve seen, it’s kind of dramatic, raspy and gritty. Did you work with him on exactly how he wanted to attack the voice performance of Marvin Flute?

CG: He gets comedy. So no, I didn’t have to do much. He knew what he was doing coming in there. If anything, what we did was we provided words… and he took it from there. He nailed it. He’s so funny. So great. Sometimes he provides his own words, which are funnier than our words, which makes me angry. (laughs) He’s amazing. He was everything I wanted him to be and more.

JM: Right from the opening scene of the first episode there’s slashing and body parts getting thrown off. How far did you want to go? What gets approved, and what does FOX say, “Ehhh… maybe not this”?

CG: We wanted to go as far as Standards & Practices would allow us. You have to push it a little bit. If you’re setting it in the detective genre, you have to. If you’ve ever seen any episode of “Law & Order” or “CSI” or “911”, there’s a lot of blood in those. We need that to help tell our stories — and also to make fun of it. The gore is there. If you like blood and you like weirdness, there’s plenty of that there. And that’s all set decoration for us to tell stories underneath that will be surprising. We’re telling these fun, great, grounded stories too.

JM: At the end of each episode, it’s very Sherlock Holmes-y, with the resolution. It’s explained or revealed. How important is the resolution for you and all the writers and [in] how you present that?

CG: It’s important. It’s also very difficult. Most of us are comedy writers. We got into this business to make jokes, not to weave a mystery that is multi-faceted and has many strings and red herrings and all the things you need in those. So it was, “Let’s figure out how to tell a mystery… and in 21 and a half minutes, and to be able to fit-in a bunch of jokes.” You’re a little limited. If we had an hour — not saying we want one — you have more time to tell an actual mystery. But I think we do a pretty good job where we can. But also too, we’re well aware that you’re not there to… to some degree, no one’s really there to play along. “I wonder who it is.” We do that sometimes if we can. But for the most part it’s there as a framework for us to use to get us from A to Z with our emotional storylines. But when we get one that works, it’s great. We get very excited. And then when we get ones that don’t work as well, then we just have Marvin explain it all to you. So that makes it a little easier.

JM: You know what? I think people are going to play along. That’s why people love these crime drama shows and movies. It’s a new added feature to the FOX Animation Domination experience.

CG: I agree. I do think it’s somewhat involuntary. You cannot help yourself. If you’re watching TV and a news story comes on, you’re already trying to guess the end of it. We’re all trying to be ahead of the person. So we can do it and we can get ahead so you don’t see it coming, that’s great. If you happen to see it coming, that’s also great because you’re gonna feel very smart. “Wow. Look at me. I’m smarter than the writers.” You should be. We’re not that smart. (laughs) Some of us. Not me. (laughs)

JM: Speaking of getting ahead, where are you in production on Season 2 of “Grimsburg”?

CG: The writing is done. We’re almost finished with all the animatics and we’re gonna start getting colors back. That’s very exciting. It’s been great coming into Season 2 having figured out so much of what we wanted to do. Everyone’s starting to get a shorthand. It’s crazy to think we’ve done 26 episodes at this point and we’re just sort of premiering now. That’s the beauty of animation. You get to work very hard for a very long time with very little feedback — and all of a sudden it comes at once. It’s exciting.

JM: So what are you gonna do on January 7th — a big football premiere party?

CG: Great question. We need to figure that out. (laughs) I think they’re gonna put something together. I believe so. They should. Listen, you wanna be honest with what I’m gonna really be doing? I’m gonna be on X, or Twitter, whatever you want to call it, and I’m going to be monitoring what people are saying throughout the entire thing because that’s what all showrunners do. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you anything different. I’ll be sitting there and be very excited when somebody says, “This show’s great”, and I will go into a funk when someone says, “This show stinks.” But I’m hoping the numbers will be more on the “This is great” side.