The upcoming Ted series gets at least one thing right: it translates Seth MacFarlane’s films to the small screen.

That was a tall task, especially considering the films featured MacFarlane and Mark Wahlberg bantering. As it was being developed, Peacock’s Ted prequel series seemed to evolve a good bit. Developed as a multicam, Ted evolved into a singlecam sitcom. It stars Max Burkholder as a young John Bennett. The series chronicles his junior year of high school.

Joining him is Giorgia Whigham, who plays his cousin, Blaire. Scott Grimes and Alanna Ubach play Matty and Susan Bennett, respectively. And, of course, MacFarlane voices Ted.

ClutchPoints spoke to Brad Walsh and Paul Corrigan, known for their work on Modern Family. They produced and wrote episodes of Ted and discussed the show’s development, Burkholder making John his own, and a Modern Family reunion.

Ted writers interview

Ted Peacock series poster on TV next to the Ted bear.

ClutchPoints: This question is for both of you guys. What were earliest conversations for this show like? Ted was a big-screen franchise, and now you’re taking it to the small screen, so I was wondering about what that adjustment looked like in the early conversations.

Brad Walsh: It actually was quite a big adjustment because early on with Seth [MacFarlane], we were discussing a bunch of different ways to go with the show. And for a fairly significant amount of time, it was actually going to be a multi-camera [sitcom] with an audience and we slowly realized that that was not going to be feasible because of the technical challenges, and also just creatively, we decided to go in a different direction.

But so there were a lot of decisions early on that really changed the direction of the show.

Paul Corrigan: Yeah, we were looking forward to trying to do a multi-cam with Ted and through the CGI effects of that and doing that on the fly, but it just proved to be too insurmountable, so we wound up transitioning to single-cam.

CP: You guys have a lot of experience with multi-cam sitcoms. Can you kind of compare the difference between the two?

BW: We spent 11 years on Modern Family, which is a single-camera show like this.

The main difference between these two shows is the CGI element. So suddenly we have a main character who is not actually there, and so there was a lot of prep to make that as smooth a transition as possible.

And luckily Seth has a really good team in place and Seth has experience in that. And ultimately after all that discussion, when we actually did it, it was pretty seamless. It really just comes down to shooting an open frame where Ted should be, and then very smart people put Ted there later on.

PC: Exactly. And I mean, and the difference between single-cam and multi-cam is [with] multi-cams, you’re putting on a play in front of an audience. And so you have to hold the attention of the audience during the taping. [Whereas] single-camera is much more similar to producing a movie.

CP: I know you guys both wrote episodes of this show. I know Seth wrote the films, so you guys were writing for an existing project and stepping into something that already has a foundation. So I was curious if that was ever challenging at all.

PC: Oh, it’s always challenging. Luckily, for most of our career, we’ve done that. We’ve worked on shows that other people have created. And so we’ve gotten pretty good at picking up the voice of other people and mimicking that style.

And, [it] turns out [that] we have a lot in common with Seth. So that was actually fairly easy.

CP: You also had another tall task with having Max Burkholder stepping into the role that Mark Wahlberg played in the films. When writing his character, did you guys have to look back at the movies at all?

PC: We never really looked back too much, just because we wanted Max to be Max and to do his version of the character. Which, you’re right, is similar, but it’s his own spin and we wanted to give him the freedom to do that.

CP: Modern Family was mentioned earlier, and with shows being revived all the time — I know it ended only a few years ago — is there ever going to be something like that for the show? I know Sofia [Vergara] posts photos of the cast together, but will we ever get a proper reunion?

BW: I’m as curious as you are, and actually my only source is the Sophia post that you’re mentioning. So I’m not sure. I have no idea, but I think that would be a neat thing to do.

I’m curious about where that family is now and how you might explore that. So yeah, I’m as curious as you, but I don’t have any information.

CP: And Paul, are there any hopes that you would have if there was ever a revival of Modern Family?

PC: Oh, absolutely. I think it’d be great to see where everyone is. It was a great cast, it was a great group of writers. We were lucky to work on that show. And I think we’d be lucky to have a chance revisit it.

Ted will be released on January 11 on Peacock.