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LOS ANGELES - Europeans don't care about sex. Whether it's lusty adultery, underage sex, overage sex, sex by the beach -- they just don't seem to care.
And that comes as joyous news to Tom Kapinos, creator of Californication, the brashly risque new David Duchovny series.
Duchovny's character
Hank Moody is struggling through a midlife crisis that manifests itself in oodles of explicit sexual encounters. And that explains why it's on pay cable (Showtime) stateside. But in Europe and some other big TV markets, Hank's hanky-panky has become fair game for free over-the-air broadcasters who are airing the series without cuts.
Kapinos admits to being a little taken aback by the fact that the Irish and British are airing the series without restrictions. He says he is so delighted that nobody seems to care in the least about the grunting and grinding that he'd definitely think about moving across the pond to work. "It never occurred to me before. But wouldn't it be great to have all that freedom open up. It sounds tremendous," he says.
British terrestrial station Five snapped up the series early in its sales cycle because it saw Californication as a "smart and sophisticated" show for its viewers. Ireland's TV3 took a similar stance. Viewers in Iceland also get to watch. Other major broadcasters taking the show on include Australia's Network Ten, Sweden's TV4, and Denmark's TV2.
"It goes to the point that here in America it's acceptable to have 20 procedural shows with dead bodies and all sorts of forensics and murders, but if you deal with sexuality people go crazy and that's been going on since the dawn of time over here," Kapinos says.
The international markets probably were the furthest thing from his mind when he sat down to write the pilot, Kapinos admits. "I never thought about it. I really had no clue about how other countries would react. All I wanted really was to have a writing sample to show people what I was capable of doing," says Kapinos.
On reflection, Kapinos says that there probably was a sensitivity to European TV watchers that could have been lurking in his subconscious.
"I grew up with parents who were big fans of British television and they introduced me to Fawlty Towers. Now there was a character (Basil Fawlty played by John Cleese) who was just so completely unlikable. But you found yourself unable to dislike him no matter how embarrassing or excruciating the circumstances that he found himself in."
That sounds not a bit unlike Kapinos' cretin Hank Moody.
- REUTERS/Hollywood Reporter