These days, graduation from college doesn’t necessarily guarantee success in the real world. In most cases, graduates who seek success in their chosen career find themselves struggling to just break in.
With many young people stuck in mundane entry level positions after college, the disillusionment of working in a lousy job can set in easily. Sometimes, such humbling (and often humiliating) experiences can provide endless inspiration for creativity.
Co-produced by Rob Aldredge, and directed by Norman Bertolino, the new comedy series McMANN AND BERNSTEIN follows a budding children’s book author and current working stiff named Raj (played by series creator/co-producer/writer Nikhil Shukla) who finds that his wacky day to day work life provides the basis for what he hopes will become his literary breakthrough.
The series is currently seeking to raise $10,000 through the popular crowd funding site IndieGoGo for production of its 8 episode first season.
Currently working as an analyst at a financial services provider (McMann and Bernstein, hence the title), Raj’s seemingly humdrum work life is suddenly thrust into chaos after the untimely death of one of the firm’s original founders.
Among his co-workers are his friend Lou Barlow (Spencer Smith, also series co-producer), a popular guy around the office who simply can’t stand the thought of working. Instead of doing his job, Lou spends a great deal of his time in pursuit of his longtime crush, Beth Nash (played by Shelly Regner).
Having just graduated from college, and desperate to make her notoriously hard-to-please mother happy by taking on a seemingly glamorous career, Beth often finds herself fighting personal insecurity while on the job.
Making their professional lives even more hectic is the newly named manager of McMann and Bernstein, Gene Biddle (David Weisenberg). With his supposedly impeccable credentials in the financial industry having been confirmed to be nothing more than a sham (he’s actually a former school principal, and not a principal investor in an alternative school), Gene dedicates himself to making his employees happy – at the expense of his own happiness.
Despite his dedication to his job of analyzing the topsy turvy world of Wall Street, Raj’s streak of hard luck and misfortune endures throughout his time on the job.
Through all the upheaval, Raj remains determined to achieve success as both an analyst, while working towards becoming the next best-selling children’s book author.
Just as his character Raj managed to find inspiration from his seemingly thankless job to create a magical fable for his children’s book, Shukla used some of his own career experiences to form the basis for his own tale of workplace hijinks in McMANN AND BERNSTEIN.
“The show is loosely based off of my life. I spent time working in a different type of finance company for two years, prior to following my acting and writing passions,” says Shukla, who adds that unlike the finance company depicted in his web series, his real life employer proved to provide him with a distinctively fulfilling experience.
“The company I worked for allowed me to really find out who I was and pushed me in a way I’ve never experienced,” he remembers. “I’m beyond grateful for that opportunity and it has made my job even more rewarding.” From there, Shukla worked with his close friend and series co-star Spencer Smith to develop and refine the overall concept for McMANN AND BERNSTEIN.
“I took what was seemingly a good idea for a short, and brought it to my friend Spencer Smith. Spencer adamantly suggested expanding it to a pilot,” Shukla recalls.
“A couple weeks later, I came back to him with the pilot, at which point we both decided there’s just too much material to not write a whole five episode season.”
Following an extensive casting process, and further development of the show’s storyline and characters, Shukla and Smith began shopping the series to potential investors and producers. It was during one of these meetings that both men would soon realize that if McMANN AND BERNSTEIN had any chance of success, it needed to do what every business venture always does to survive – it had to expand, and to do so with steady leadership on hand.
“Months had passed, and the two of us had done a lot of table reads and workshopping of the script when we were able to get a huge meeting,” says Shukla. “The producer we spoke with loved our business strategy, but suggested adding a couple more episodes to the season to make it something that’ll really have the potential to stick. In December, we brought (producer Rob Aldredge) aboard to help guide our ship to an actual finish.”
McMANN AND BERNSTEIN creator/writer/actor Nikhil Shukla.
While most workplace comedies tend to take place almost entirely within the confines of an office setting, McMANN AND BERNSTEIN has a unique element that adds further depth to the show’s story and characters.
As Shukla explains, the on-the-job moments Raj experiences every day are distinctively enhanced, and transformed, through the children’s book he’s currently writing – thus tying back to the events depicted in each episode.
“Inherently, half hour office comedies all follow a similar mold, whether it be SCRUBS, THE OFFICE or SILICON VALLEY. We intend to offer a little twist by wrapping each episode with a voice over of Raj narrating his latest work on his children’s book,” Shukla says. “Actual sketches turn over as he does so, putting the story of McMANN AND BERNSTEIN into a perspective that perhaps only a children’s story ever could.”
Thanks to their talented cast and crew, including Aldredge and Bertolino, getting McMANN AND BERNSTEIN from the written page to the screen has proven to be extremely fulfilling for Shukla and Smith.
“It’s been an amazing learning experience. For many of us, this is our first time creating a project of this scale,” Shukla says. “We’re fortunate to have a network of friends with experience in production who’ve been able to guide us.”
With hilarious, and highly relatable, situations and characters sure to attract young adults and working people alike, each episode of McMANN AND BERNSTEIN proves that while success isn’t necessarily guaranteed upon entry into the corporate world, it’s the way you adapt to the realities of life on the job that really counts. It’s something that Shukla definitely knows from experience.
“Spending a couple years in an office place, I realized, no matter what kind of company you’re at, you still have some of the same interpersonal issues,” he says. “Growing up, you think that once you finish college you’re just ready to start working. This show takes a look at that gray area in between.”
(Note: The show is not currently closed-captioned, but Shukla says he will ask his production team about adding that feature to each episode.)
For more information on the show’s IndieGoGo campaign, plus information on how to contribute, please visit:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mcmann-bernstein#home
ON THE WEB: http://www.mcmannandbernstein.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/mcmannandbernstein
TWITTER: @McMannBernstein
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