On the heels of “Potscrubbers” and “Cincinnati Sprinkles,” the just-launched “Drucker” looks like another success for streaming service Nimble. The show stars Carson Clemmons, acclaimed for his role as the umpire with a secret in “Psychopathish.”
Set in 1972, the new show is based on the character Sam Drucker, proprietor of the general store in the sitcoms “Green Acres” and “Petticoat Junction.” After solving a soybean heist in Hooterville, Drucker has decided to become a full time crime fighter. He sells the store to handyman Eb Dawson and moves to Kansas City, where he goes up against a mob of gangsters headed by Mort “The Menace” Miller (an aptly sinister G. Leo Hall).
“He may be a country storekeeper, but Drucker has big city savvy,” says show runner Donna O’Brien. She and creative partner Sheila Trombley started developing the show two years ago, following the cancellation of the Plunk network’s “Cleo and the Choir,” which they created in 2017.
Nimble released the first three episodes of “Drucker” three weeks ago – there are ten in season one – and the critics have been plenty enthusiastic:
- “The fact that Drucker always wears a shopkeeper’s visor, even when he’s fighting gangsters, says something about this man,” wrote Sandy Fritsch in the January 2 issue of Montezuma. “What it says is that no matter how many bad guys he puts away, he’s not going to forget that little town with the Cannonball train and Shady Rest Hotel.”
- “Carson Clemmons is truly Sam Drucker,” the New York Compendium’s Monica Teller wrote on January 4. “Not since Robert Redford played Dan Rather in 2015’s “Truth” has a performer melded so flawlessly into another character.”
Clemmons, who co-starred in Nimble’s 2018-22 “Toothpaste Wars” before “Psychopathish,” reportedly won the Drucker role over 200 other young actors – including Jimmy Coleman, who’d just completed a six season run playing the Hubcap Man in “Thank You for What?”
“You could have knocked me over with a broom,” says Clemmons. “These parts always go to Jimmy or Alex (Peterberg, of “Unsung Singer”). Clemmons is too young to remember Drucker’s original sitcoms, and admits he never watched their reruns on Nickelodeon. “But I did know about the talking pig,” he says.
That pig, Arnold Ziffel, doesn’t actually talk, of course, but rather communicates with oinks and grunts that certain humans seem to understand. He’ll be featured in an upcoming episode, in which he sniffs out some counterfeit 20s the Miller gang has hidden. “I can’t really say any more,” says Clemmons, “except this is a different Arnold Ziffel than fans might remember.”
O’Brien says other characters – or at least a version of them – will show up, too.
“The Mr. Haney character didn’t go over with test audiences,” she says, “so we’ve replaced Eustace Haney with Eunice Haney.” Played by Syd Callings of “Seventh Day Adventists,” Eunice will come to Kansas City in episode six and end up helping Drucker disengage a cluster bomb.
Also, one of the three daughters from “Petticoat Junction” – O’Brien doesn’t say which one – will seek out Drucker to help her kick a steroids addiction.
At 32, six feet-four, and with thick black hair, Carson Clemmons bears little resemblance to the actor who played the 1960s Sam Drucker. Frank Cady was shorter, bald, and in his late 50s. “I guess it’s something about poetic license,” says Clemmons. “And I guess it’s not about whether you have hair or not.”
O’Brien says that Nimble has been extremely supportive of the project. “We asked them to re-build the Hooterville sets just for the first episode,” she says. “It cost them $15 million and they didn’t blink an eye.” (CBS, the shows’ original network, had unfortunately sold the hotel, store and train sets to a Dutch conglomerate that planned to use them as part of a theme park that never materialized.)
“The only thing we went back and forth on was the catchphrase,” says O’Brien. She and Trombley have avoided catchprashes since their experience with 2009’s “Snake Lady” – when crooked CPA Sally Remson’s “Ditch the books, pass the pasta!” offended a national accounting organization, which then picketed outside ABC headquarters until the phrase was dropped.
But citing the success of “Tase me with a taser!” from “Kitchenette Confidential” and “Formaldehyde, baby!” from “Laid Out,” Nimble insisted. So O’Brien and Trombley came up with “We’re up to our nostrils!”
“This is basically a comedic element,” says O’Brien. “Everyone expects you to be up to your ass or your eyeballs, not your nostrils.” Different body parts were tested with over 50 focus groups, she says, and she’s confident the phrase will catch on with the public “We’ve got people on the streets listening for it,” she says. “And we’ll be ready.”
Nimble has yet to renew “Drucker” for a second season, but O’Brien is confident that’ll happen soon. “Once they see what happens between Mort Miller and the ballerina in Episode 8,” she says, “I think that’ll pretty much seal the deal.”
