Hart Hanson has a few things to say about The Beachcombers and Bruno Gerussi. Nothing lurid, mind you. "Thinking back, I can't believe how lucky I was to write some episodes of The Beachcombers. There isn't a person in Canada who doesn't know that show, respond to the theme music."
And Gerussi? "Bruno Gerussi was a serious man. A serious actor who had a distinguished career doing Shakespeare," he says. "He was blunt, too. My mother told me that her dad, my grandfather, had known Gerussi. Eventually, I asked him about that. Boy, was he blunt. What he said, I couldn't even tell my mother."
Flash forward 21 years later to a Fox network party. It is noisy, crowded and glamorous. There's a red-carpet fandango at one entrance. Paparazzi teem outside. While I wait to hear from Hanson's assistant, I watch the guy who plays Puck on Glee walk by, having what sounds like a heated conversation with a publicist about the interviews he will do and the ones he definitely will not do.
Eventually I'm talking to Hanson's assistant on the phone, trying to figure out where he is. In typical Hollywood fashion at these shindigs, we keep talking until we meet face to face. With necessary rapture of course. I'm taken to meet Hanson, who is trying to progress into the restaurant courtyard. Actors keep stopping him for a chat. An actor of the tall, leggy, female variety stops him, and he asks, in a scolding, joking manner if that's vodka in her glass. She giggles, "Yeah, maybe." He asks my opinion. The actor is on Bones, where he's the boss. I say she's drinking soda-water only. He introduces us. I'm her new best friend, I think. It's the way it is here.
Hanson, 53, is the creator, executive producer and writer of Bones, the Fox hit now in its sixth season (Fox, Global, Thursdays at 9 p.m.). Born in the United States, his family brought him to Canada when he was a baby. A graduate of the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia, he fell into writing for TV in Canada and, for a decade, had a typical Canadian TV career. After The Beachcombers he wrote for Neon Rider, Road to Avonlea, Ready Or Not, North of 60.and Street Legal. He was a writer and supervising producer on Traders, Global's series about Bay Street, in the late 1990s. Then he landed in L.A. and wrote for shows such as Judging Amy and Joan of Arcadia. Next he was in charge on Bones.
When we eventually sit down in a quiet corner, I ask him: "How did that happen? How did you go from a typical Canadian career to running a huge show on Fox?"
Hanson, a charming, down-to-earth man with a fine sense of humour, explains. "I'd been running Traders and in 1998, I think, we'd just won our third Gemini," he says. "It was nice but kind of depressing. Traders had about one million viewers, but it aired against ER and ER was getting more than three times the number of viewers. I was just turning 40. I had this feeling that it was time to move on. I wanted to work on something with a bigger audience.
"The next day, actually, I got a call from an agent in L.A. At that time several American network shows were being made in Canada for tax reasons and a low dollar, and this agent asked if I was interested in being the showrunner in Canada for one of these productions. It was flattering, I suppose, but my reaction was to tell him I wanted to test myself, to see if I could cut it in L.A. I just wanted to see if I could do it. He told me my first test was to write a "spec" script for a U.S. show, which I did. I came here and I wrote episodes of Cupid, a show that only lasted a season, but it got a lot of praise. I learned things. I was lucky."
After that, Hanson wrote episodes of Snoops, an offbeat detective show created by David E. Kelley, then the hottest thing in TV because his Ally McBeal was huge. "I left Snoops and was offered a contract to develop shows. Best thing that ever happened to me," he says. "A clause in the contract obliged me to create a new show idea and that is what led to Bones. I was asked to meet this producer who had bought the rights to the books and life story of Kathy Reichs, the forensic anthropologist. I met the producer but I told him and my agent, "I'm not doing a forensics show. Not a CSI thing. Not a police procedural. It's just not me."
But after reading the books by the Montreal-based Reichs and watching a documentary about her work, Hanson knew there was a show in the material – what he calls "a sort of comedy-drama-romance-forensics series." And that's what Bones is – an immensely clever series that relies on both the chemistry between FBI Agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) and tart-tongued forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan (Emily Deschanel), while filling each episode with the science of forensic anthropology. "The network said, 'Fine, okay, go with it,' but I knew they were lying," he says, and laughs. "They didn't know what they were getting. We were the last pilot to be picked up by Fox that year."
It began airing in September 2005, and is still going strong. "Nobody expected it to last 'til Christmas," Hanson says. "Then nobody expected it to be renewed for a second season. It was like working on a Canadian show, where you're always up against these huge other shows." Soon, Hanson adds, the show will introduce a character who will be the basis for a new show that Hanson is developing. Not a spinoff, he insists, but a new show that starts with an episode of Bones.
I ask Hanson what it means to be "showrunner" on Bones. "Everything," he says. "Every decision goes through me. It sounds like an evil, maniacal job, but it isn't. I'm the one in charge, that's all."
Hanson has also drawn attention through his Twitter account. He's a rare TV boss who regularly engages with fans through Twitter. But, like many here in the U.S. these days, he's becoming wary of online communication. He issues a deep sigh when asked about Twitter. "I was talked into it by [actor] Stephen Fry, who was a guest on our show. I wanted to see what it was like. But I've mostly stopped interacting with the fans. It's too loud. It's mean, it's loud and there's a lot of screaming. I have 30,000 followers and I did the math. That's way less than one per cent of the viewers on Bones. I can't hear myself think, listening to the noise from those really vocal people."
What Hanson does listen to, he says, is his own instinct, based on his experience in television going back The Beachcombers. He mentions Bruno Gerussi again: "He was serious, he wasn't always happy working on this lighthearted, half-hour show. But that show worked. It's a thrilling experience when a show works. Bones is working now." Finally, full of genuine enthusiasm for his work he says. "We're going to be on after American Idol this year. Did you know that? We're going to get another boost." And then he leaves, happy, smiling.