“We do things a little unorthodox around here,” South Florida judge Bob Gibbs tells newly arrived lawyer Kathy Baker in what turns out to be a vast understatement.
Indeed, because Baker’s client broke the law — and his parole agreement — by being too young to legally drink a beer, Gibbs sentences the wayward man to death!
Welcome to the world of “Maximum” Bob Gibbs, where the law is subject to his own unique interpretations, and, as far as he’s concerned, the powers of a king are perks that come with his jurisdiction over the sleepy province surrounding Deep Water, Fla.
“When I sentence a man to death by electrocution, it is because I think he deserves the shock of his life!” Gibbs declares without a trace of self-consciousness.
Gibbs, whose judicial position helps feed his outrageous zest for life, is the protagonist of “Maximum Bob,” a seven-episode comedy-drama premiering Tuesday.
Gibbs is flamboyant, overbearing, annoying, chauvinistic, condescending and a scoundrel. He’s described by one character as “Billy Graham by way of Attila the Hun,” and another as a good ol’ boy who could just as easily be “moonlighting hides and meats instead of sitting on the bench getting hemorrhoids.”
“Pretty bizarre, huh?” says Beau Bridges, the veteran actor playing Gibbs.
“You never can know what’s going to come out of his mouth,” Bridges says.
“He’s constantly in people’s face, and you don’t want to be coming up in front of him in court.”
Gibbs is the creation of famed crime novelist Elmore Leonard (“Get Shorty,” “Rum Punch”), and the series is adapted from his novel of the same name.
Bringing “Maximum Bob” to television is a team led by filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld (“Men in Black”), who has previous experience with Leonard’s work — he turned “Get Shorty” into a critically acclaimed feature film.
“A show like this never would have ever made it past very, very initial stages unless somebody like Barry Sonnenfeld were involved,” says Alex Gansa, who executive-produces “Maximum Bob” with Sonnenfeld and Barry Josephson.
And that’s not only because Gibbs is such a reprobate. The town of Deep Water looks more like Twin Peaks-South through the imaginative eye of Sonnenfeld, who directed the pilot.
Instead of dancing little people, there are two hefty, educationally challenged twins (Peter Allan Vogt and Paul Vogt) who are involved in various schemes. Rather than an evil spirit named, oddly enough, BOB, there is the ghost of a teenager (RaeVen Larrymore-Kelly) who speaks to Gibbs’ young wife Leanne (Kiersten Warren), a one-time “mermaid” at a themed water park who now operates as a psychic.
Take these and other bizarre inhabitants, mix them with Sonnenfeld’s penchant for extreme closeups and off-center camera angles (which he honed on the two “Addams Family” movies), infuse the result with Leonard’s quirky vision of Southern life, and you’ve got a series distinctively rare for network television.
“I think Elmore Leonard is such a stylish writer. He’s really unique,” Bridges says. “And it (the show) needed somebody who could visually match that style. Barry, coming out of his work as a cinematographer, has that visual feel,and I think he did a really exciting pilot visually that matched the written word.”
Gansa, a former producer of “The X-Files,” says ABC may be a little “nervous” about “Maximum Bob,” not just for a tone that is so different, but because it’s in the spirit of such a distinctive voice as Leonard.
“Leonard’s books are just wonderful and intricately plotted,” Gansa says. “But they’re darkly funny. And I think that was really one of the reasons why `Twin Peaks’ didn’t last or `American Gothic’ didn’t last. Those worlds were so dark and so oppressive, that people just didn’t want to bring that into their living room each week.”
To combat Gibbs’ obtrusive behavior, as well as some of Leonard’s darker sensibilities that might creep into storylines (Leonard isn’t involved in the production, although Bridges says he heard the writer did “appreciate” the first episode), “layers of sweetness” have been added, without compromising the spirit of the series’ premise, Gansa says.
“I think that’s important, because ultimately, you want Bob to be outrageous and to be all the things that he is, but at the same time, you also want to like him,” says Gansa, who adapted the book “Maximum Bob” into a teleplay for the pilot.
Gansa says viewers should be able to find something likable in Gibbs, despite his shortcomings, partly because of the performance of the likable Bridges, a multi-Emmy winner (including HBO’s “Without Warning: The James Brady Story”) and member of the popular show business Bridges family that includes brother Jeff and their father, the late Lloyd.
One of the fun things about playing Gibbs, according to Bridges, is that although the man makes himself out to be the de facto dictator of Deep Water, there are always people around “shaking up” his mock kingdom.
They include Gibbs’ young wife, who sees him as “a project to save,” Bridges says, and feisty public defender Kathy Baker, played by Liz Vassey of “Brotherly Love.”
“Bob is sort of a borderline racist, which is, in my mind, certainly a heinous crime, if you will, for somebody to have going (for himself),” says Bridges, 56. “And yet we get to see people shaking up Bob.”
Bridges also likes the many layers of Gibbs’ character. For all his bluster, the judge grows such exotic flowers as orchids. Bridges, who has a garden of mostly vegetables at his L.A. home, has been inspired into planning a greenhouse to grow orchids himself.
Gibbs also is deeply in love with his wife, even though, in the first episode, he gets someone to sic an alligator on her (just to scare her). The relationship between Gibbs and Leanne will be the key to Gibbs’ likability for many viewers, both Gansa and Bridges agree.
“His wife really loves him and his wife is a good person,” Gansa says. “His wife is somebody that I think we will say, `God, she believes that this is somebody that can be rehabilitated, then I’ll believe it, too.”‘
There is a scene in a future episode, Bridges says, where Gibbs has dodged yet another bullet of indiscretion. “I’m sitting there talking to (Leanne),” he recalls, “and she says, `You know, you’re a hound dog, Bob Gibbs.’ And I say (affecting Gibbs’ soft Southern drawl), `Well, you’re right, my dear, I am a hound dog, I’ve been sniffing around where I didn’t belong. But I swear, honey muffin, I’m trying to work my way up the evolutionary ladder.’
“So I think that’s his saving grace, that he’s trying to learn.”
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`Maximim Bob’
Premieres 9 p.m.
Tuesday, ABC Ch. 7
