Not Your Average Writers’ Workspace

Jeffrey Klarik and David Crane pause beneath a wisteria arbor on a terrace that looks toward a slice of blue ocean beyond their Spanish-style, four-acre Montecito estate. They’ve just arrived home following the Nantucket Film Festival. There, with Episodes poised to enter its fifth and final season on BBC Two and Showtime, they received the Creative Impact in Television Writing Award, as well as perks not usually bestowed on writers—even those as successful as they are.

Though clearly accustomed to luxury, the low-key pair are still basking in the festival’s celebrity treatment. “They had a car for us,” Klarik crows, puckish, stubbled, wearing enormous shades below an Episodes cap. “In case we wanted to go for pizza or anything,” adds Crane, in heavy-rimmed spectacles and a faded blue polo shirt. A couple for 30 years, as well as writing partners, they are given to finishing each other’s sentences.

Their dynamic formed the basis for Episodes, a single camera, half-hour sitcom about a married English screenwriting team, Sean and Beverly Lincoln, lured to the U.S. to adapt their award-winning British series. On a balmy Southern California afternoon, Klarik, perhaps best known for creating Half and Half and executive producing Mad About You, and Crane, who co-created Friends with Marta Kaufmann talk to Written By.