Nancy Carell has written one show, Angie Tribeca, with her husband Steve: a cop series that refuses to admit it is a comedy. Two episodes at a time it is a pleasure; the open question is whether she has a second idea.
Fi1m perspective
A detective fills in a form at his desk. He is a dog. Nobody mentions it, the lieutenant keeps shouting about the mayor, and the camera stays in the flat, well-lit, locked-off frame of a weeknight procedural. That is Angie Tribeca (2016) in one shot, and it is the whole of Nancy Carell's method as a writer: play everything straight, put the joke at the edge of the picture, and never let a face admit it has noticed.
The method comes from where she learned to work. She started in improv at Boston College and went on to Second City in Chicago, where she met Steve Carell, and she spent a single season on Saturday Night Live (1995) doing impressions, most notably the CNN anchor Bobbie Battista. Then came three years as a correspondent on The Daily Show (1999), a job that consists entirely of keeping a serious face while saying something absurd. Her acting since, as Carol Stills on The Office (2005) and in small parts in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Bridesmaids (2011), is the same instrument used lightly. She was never the standout in any of those rooms, and the writing is where the instinct finally runs the show.
By her own account the series began with nothing but a name: "It started with just the name, 'Angie Tribeca.' We thought it was funny." What the Carells built on it was a precinct in the line of The Naked Gun, with a gag on every desk and Rashida Jones, their best decision, at the centre of it refusing to react to any of them. Jere Burns shouts about nothing, Andree Vermeulen announces impossible causes of death, and Ludwig Göransson and Nathan Matthew David score a dog climbing into a squad car as if it were a raid. The casting of Jones is a writer's choice as much as a producer's: the show only works if the lead will not smile, and she does not.
We laughed out loud at the pilot, more than once, nearly all of it at the dog and at Jones declining to see anything strange about him. By the fourth episode in a sitting we had stopped laughing and started counting, because the second and third jokes in every scene were there to fill a quota, not because anyone had thought of a good one. The Zucker films let a gag breathe before the next one arrived; the Carells and their large writers' room never learned that trick, and the show ran four seasons without learning it. The other complaint the reviews made, that there is no heart under the jokes, seems to us beside the point. A spoof with heart is a different show, and not necessarily a better one.
She has since gone back to acting, as Susan Riggs in Rooster (2026). Whether the one show was a complete statement or the first of several, she has so far declined to tell us, which is, after all, the house style.
Biography
Nancy Carell (born Nancy Ellen Walls) is an American actress, comedian and writer. She graduated from Boston College in 1988, where she performed with the improvisational troupe My Mother's Fleabag. She began her professional career with The Second City in Chicago and was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 1996. She later worked as a correspondent on The Daily Show.
Carell has appeared in supporting roles in films such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) and Bridesmaids (2011), and guest-starred on The Office (2005–2013) as Carol Stills. With her husband Steve Carell, whom she met at Second City, she co-created the TBS comedy series Angie Tribeca (2016), serving as writer and executive producer.
