Ed Herro & Brian Donovan Make Mayhem, Murder & Maple Syrup In “The Sticky"

A story about a maple syrup heist may seem the stuff of wacky pulp fiction, but a notable heist did actually happen in Canada. It inspired a TV series from comedy writers Ed Herro and Brian Donovan (American Housewife) appropriately titled The Sticky. It stars Margot Martindale as Ruth Landry who gets herself into a sticky situation when her livelihood as a maple syrup farmer comes under attack by greedy developers and a bureaucratic government. She recruits local security guard Remy Bouchard (Guillaume Cyr) and Bostonian gangster Mike Byrne (Chris Diamantopoulos) to assist in her cockamamie plan which might be crazy enough to work.

Brian Donovan describes the show as a work of historical fiction. “There was a robbery of $20 million worth of maple syrup from the Canadian Maple Syrup Reserve.” That’s where actual events end and the wild imagination of Herro and Donovan begins. They explicitly state, “This is absolutely not the true story,” in case there was any doubt.

“Canadian maple syrup sales and farming is all monitored by the government, and there are laws about how it works. We take that predicament, which creates these fun complications and people feeling put on the outside and held down for the show.”

“We fictionalize these underdogs who would try to do something so crazy and ask what situation would you have to be in where you would consider pulling off the biggest heist in Canadian history? That’s really our guiding light.” Who could ever suspect the invisible trio of such a thing?

Herro adds that “99% of our show is fiction, but it’s taking this one real life problem and distilling it into a much more narrative story. It was trying to get the energy and the vibe of the real life situation, but through a totally fictional story.”

Finding The Comedy In Tragedy

Brian and Ed came up through the comedy ranks writing jokes and setting up punch lines. They decided to chart a new course through a more grounded style of comedy.

“We delved into the authenticity and reality of the world and the characters by putting three people who are very serious about this ridiculous crime in it,” says Ed. There were many jokes which didn’t make it to the screen so they didn’t “muddle the tone.”

“We wanted it very high stakes, very desperate as Ruth Landry [Martindale] steals millions of dollars worth of syrup. These are all shattered people, but shattered for different reasons. This one goal of completing the heist might solve all their problems.”

The humor arises when the three people conducting the heist agree on the goal, but disagree on how to achieve it. The antics of these heisters who are totally unqualified to do something so extreme is inherently funny no matter how seriously they take it.

Is The Sticky A Sitcom?

Brian Donovan and Ed Herro were actually working on a sitcom when the idea for The Sticky came to them. “When you’re writing on a sitcom, you have to finish every scene with a laugh,” mentions Donovan.

“We’ve been on shows where we would spend a week trying to find the right joke to end a scene because you can’t end a scene on a non-joke. Very purposefully, we went back and cut almost all the jokes because they really change the sensibility of a scene.”

The writers weren’t necessarily aiming for laughs despite the outlandishness of the events. “Our goal was to write as realistically as possible because real life is never purely comedy or purely drama. Life is a little weird, a little funny, and a little hard.”

The Sticky only has six episodes, but it moves at a quick clip. In spite of this, they gave the characters ample space to breathe.

“Sitcoms are sweaty, but we wanted to let the jokes find the audience, not the audience expecting and searching for the gags and the laughs,” shares Herro.

“Our three leads don’t find themselves funny. They’re all in crisis. So it’s funny to watch how they react to crisis,” adds Brian.

Meet Ruth Landry – Desperately Funny

Ruth is reacting to worsening circumstances. Being a maple syrup farmer is hard and uncertain work.

“It’s physically taxing. It can be dangerous. You don’t know how much money you’re going to make. She’s had this business with her husband for decades. One morning he goes out to the farm by himself, falls into a coma, and she feels incredible guilt. That guilt and panic over the most important person in her life being sick drives every action that she takes,” states Brian. Anything that stands in the way of that, Ruth will run over with her truck.

“Ruth is impulsive. She makes mistakes. She’s pigheaded. She’s stubborn. But ultimately, she acts out of love of her husband. She’s just trying to get to the next minute. She doesn’t have a master plan. That desperation is funny. We love why she’s doing it, even if we don’t always love what she does.” Her inability to think things through contrast with her grounding in other areas of her life.

"Desperation is hilarious." – Margot Martindale

Writing The Sticky

“It’s a tricky thing to write a heist show, especially in the streaming era, because you want every episode to have a cliffhanger. You want everything to go off on a twist so audiences ask, ‘What’s going to happen next?’ The nature of the real crime had almost no twists.”

“Our biggest challenge was how to keep the grounded feel and the reality of the show while still making sure that the plot is churning in an exciting way and a new bad thing is happening to them in every episode,” adds Donovan. It was a matter of folding in the fun and tension of the heist.

"You have to be very careful with balancing the entertainment value of a big twist with plausibility and having it not feel cartoonish or silly."

The pair wrote The Sticky on spec and eventually sold it to Blumhouse Television. They spent considerable time writing the exact pilot they wanted. Moreover, the pilot episode changed the least during the development process.

Episodes two through six were extensively rewritten. “We were writing stuff on set because we either found discoveries or threads we pulled and had to fix,” mentions Ed.

The writing duo writes quick scenes and go back and forth for rapid feedback. “That was crucial, not only because it helps having two heads, but we’re both the guardians of the tone and the theories.” Ed and Brian have worked together for years, so they have a shorthand for their writing collaboration.

Each actor brought new nuances to their characters that the writers didn’t previously consider. Actors provide new “explanations and justifications” to elevate their characters beyond what’s on the page.