Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Trial & Error is one of three NBC sitcoms to delight us this season, but the off-the-wall true-crime mockumentary stands out because of its setting. Unlike The Good Place and Great News, Trial & Error goes south. While most shows take place in the city or suburbs (or the afterlife, as in The Good Place), Trial & Error sets its action in the eccentric (and fictional) East Peck, South Carolina. After watching a few episodes of Trial & Error, it dawned on me how few sitcoms are set in the South. Being from Tennessee, Trial & Error scratched an itch I didn’t know I had; East Peck looked a lot like the towns my family would drive through on our way to visit relatives (who also lived in their own East Pecks). I realized that Trial & Error may be the long-awaited revenge of the rural purge.
No, the “rural purge” is not an installment in the horror film franchise (although give the series time, it’ll get there). The rural purge is a real thing that happened to television, a mass extinction event that killed off a number of iconic classic TV series as well as a multiverse of country comedies.
Prior to 1970, the TV landscape was densely populated with shows set in sparsely populated areas. Many of those shows were also set in one of two shared sitcom universes. Set in the fictional Mayberry, North Carolina, The Andy Griffith Show launched in 1960 and kicked off a decade of small town hijinks and lesson-learning. Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. spun off from Andy Griffith and, following Griffith’s end in 1968, a new series called Mayberry R.F.D. took its place. In addition to the Mayberry-verse, CBS was also home to the Hooterville shows. Whereas Mayberry was quaint and comforting, Hooterville was madcap and bizarre. It was so bizarre that no one state could claim it, and there’s hilariously detailed information about the fictional city’s possible location. The Beverly Hillbillies launched in 1962, depicting the Clampett clan’s relocation from Hooterville to Beverly Hills. A TV season later, CBS added a show set entirely in Hooterville (Petticoat Junction) to its lineup. Another Hooterville-set series, Green Acres, debuted in 1965. Green Acres and Petticoat Junction shared a setting and supporting cast members (Frank Cady appeared in over 300 episodes across all three Hooterville series!). That’s a lot of shows — and none of them made it out of 1971 alive.
In order to attract a younger, more urban audience, CBS slashed its lineup. Petticoat Junction was cut in 1970, and CBS proceeded to woo city folk with topical new programs like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family. After those new shows gained attention, the bloodbath began. 1971 saw the end of Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Mayberry R.F.D., Hee-Haw, Lassie and many others. Even a new Andy Griffith show was axed after 10 episodes! The rebranded CBS launched a new slate of programming, including The Bob Newhart Show, Maude, and The Carol Burnett Show.
The rural purge not only wiped out all of those Southern-set shows in the ’70s, but it almost got rid of them for good. Designing Women and Tyler Perry’s House of Payne and Meet the Browns were set in Georgia, and NBC’s The Carmichael Show is set in North Carolina. And… that’s about it. Over the past 46 years, successful sitcoms have opted to go urban or suburban, usually in California or New York or smack dab in the Midwest. Trial & Error joins The Carmichael Show as a proudly Southern sitcom, and it also brings back the madcap goofiness that made shows like The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres distinct.
Trial & Error co-creator Jeff Astrof talked to Decider via email about the decision to set the new show in South Carolina. Considering that the show’s main inspiration, the real true-crime docu-series The Staircase, took place in North Carolina, it made sense to also set the sitcom version in the South. “One of the through-lines of the show is about being an outsider, especially for a Northeasterner such as Josh,” wrote Astrof. “To me, small-town South Carolina seemed like a very gentle place which could be stirred up by a case such as this.” The trial definitely stirs up the denizens of East Peck, emphasizing just how small this town is. East Peck immediately decides Larry Henderson (John Lithgow) is guilty of murdering his wife, which they show through commemorative t-shirts and a commercial jingle. All of this baffles lawyer Josh Segal (Nicholas D’Agosto), a New York attorney who has yet to experience anything quite like life in East Peck.
This dynamic, wherein a New Yorker gets caught up in a twister of Southern eccentricities, makes Trial & Error feel like a modern-day Green Acres. That show focused on the Oliver and Lisa Douglas, a well-to-do New York couple that relocated to Hooterville in an attempt to get away from it all. Instead, they ended up in a land with exploding tractors, a celebrity pig, accident-prone handymen, an inept conman, and more. Most inconveniently, Oliver and Lisa had to climb a telephone pole every time they wanted to make a call. Like Green Acres, the town in Trial & Error is populated with weirdos. Josh and his team (which includes the sweet but bumbling investigator Dwayne Reed and the earnest but malady-riddled Anne) share a workspace with a taxidermist, the most popular restaurant is seemingly the Steak ‘n’ Save, and “by bear” is one of the many death penalty options. Like Green Acres, Trial & Error also has an absurdist streak that manifests as a series of running jokes (Anne’s dozens of ailments, the increasingly cluttered murder board, the saga of a severed hand).
Astrof wanted to make sure that East Peck’s specific strain of Southern silliness was crafted with affection. “It was very important to me to be as authentic as possible and a rule in the [writers’] room was that we never made fun of the people or the South in a mean or judgmental way,” said Astrof. “I was very self-conscious about that and had writers from North Carolina and small-town Texas who checked me whenever we got into dicey territory or crossed a line. They also corrected my Northeastern perceptions of the South. Obviously, comedy is about creeping up to lines to where it’s dangerous, but not go too far. I hope we were successful.”
As a Southerner, I’d say Astrof and the Trial & Error team succeeded. The citizens of East Peck are lovable and, in a welcome upgrade, diverse. Just like how my father, a gospel-singin’ and football-watchin’ Southern man, laughed at the antics of Jed Clampett and his kin, I too found myself grinning at Dwayne Reed’s goofy monologues about the history of East Peck. Trial & Error fills a very specific role in my life as a sitcom fan from the South—and that’s a role that’s gone unfilled for decades.
“At the end of the day, I want this show to be a love letter to the people of E. Peck, eccentricities and all,” said Astrof. “And yes, I’m really sick of writing shows that take place in L.A. or New York.”
