'Wilfred' is no dog, even though it's about a dog

Wilfred is no dog, even though its about a dog Image

PASADENA, Calif. — Australian imports usually do well in America's entertainment scene. We've welcomed "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," "Strictly Ballroom," "Muriel's Wedding," Hugh Jackman, Toni Collette. But are we quite ready for Wilfred?

"Wilfred" is a new sitcom based on a huge Aussie hit that premieres Thursday on FX. Wilfred is a pedigree dog — a big, lumpy gray canine with a shiny black nose and an outlandish Australian personality. People like to tickle him on his round belly except for his next-door-neighbor, Ryan.

Ryan is a depressive who has, so far, failed at most everything. But Ryan (played by former Hobbit Elijah Wood) harbors one talent that no one else has. He sees Wilfred as a goofy guy in a dog suit. Everyone else sees a real dog.

Wood says he fell madly in love with the script when he first read it. "I thought it was so hilarious and so unlike anything I'd ever read and anything I could imagine seeing on television," he says.

"So I was immediately very excited. And I hadn't actually heard of the Australian show, and so I immediately went onto YouTube and looked up clips and became very, very excited … For me it was also a wonderful opportunity to do something I had never really had the opportunity to do before, to work in the realm of comedy and to be challenged in a way that I hadn't before, so I was very excited at that as well," says Wood.

Then Wood met with David Zuckerman, the writer who was to lend "Wilfred" an American accent.

"One of the things I loved about it when I first saw the original was just the feeling of sort of surreality, and there was, like, this dream-like quality to the show, and that was one thing that I really wanted to maintain for the American version," says Zuckerman, who wrote "American Dad!" and was a developer on "Family Guy."

"But I wanted it to be more of a fever dream. What's real? What's not real? And the show is completely from Ryan's point of view, so we, the audience, hopefully are feeling the same discomfort and disorientation that Ryan's feeling. It's ambiguous. It's mysterious. We aren't sure if Wilfred is a good guy or not, and hopefully the fun of the show will be the audience figuring it out as Ryan figures it out."

Zuckerman says it's imperative that Ryan never doubts that Wilfred is a man with floppy ears and a tail. "If Ryan ever were to say, 'You're just a dog. You can't be talking. This can't be happening,' that would be the network version. But I think FX allows us to go a little darker, and I think the reason Ryan doesn't ask those questions is because the answers might be more terrifying than the actual questions."

The original Australian version was co-created by and starred Jason Gann, who plays the gutsy Wilfred in this version. "It's faster. It could be darker. It's slicker," he says about the American spin-off.

"It's the show that I wanted to make. I wouldn't have done a new version of 'Wilfred' had I not thought that it could be better and … we've got a lot of really great, diehard fans that the 'Wilfred' brand has created since its short-film inception back in 2002, and so they're really passionate about that character," he says.

"But I wanted it to reach a bigger audience, and I really think that this show maintains its artistic and comedic edge, yet I think that it should reach a wider audience," says Gann.

"I kind of thought of it as 'Harvey' meets 'Son of Sam,' the takeoff," says Zuckerman.

Wood agrees. "It really reminded me of 'Harvey' … It's a favorite movie of mine, and there's that aspect of that sort of imaginary character relationship that I find really interesting and I love in that film, and there's definitely an element of it here, so I have certainly used that to describe it to people.

"It's not the easiest thing to describe. It's about a man who befriends a dog who he sees as a man in a dog suit, right, and the sort of comedy that ensues in the world around them, in a way. And I also said that the dog smokes pot, so that helps."

'Wilfred' is no dog, even though it's about a dog