“Shot over ten intense (and hot) days in August 2019,” Inspector Ike first came knocking for me during the pandemic. Like Inherent Vice, it luxuriates in a parallel universe pleasantly askew, right next door to our own. Styled as a “lost” weekly movie feature, it speaks to an imagined audience of 1970s New York City weeknight TV viewers. In the world of Inspector Ike, the criminals are dopey, disgruntled understudies and trust-fund schemers, and the police are equally daffy do-gooders and office romantics, each of them the starry-eyed godchildren of Leslie Nielsen and Columbo, perfectly blessed in physical comedy, style, and line delivery. The facts of the mystery are made apparent to the audience from the get-go, and it’s OK to take a break for another bowl of chili; there’s enough for everyone.

Much has been written about whether this movie is parody, satire, homage or something else entirely. While the terms all provide a useful point of comparison, I fear they each fall short: this is cleverer than parody, kinder than satire, far more inventive than mere homage. The movie is close-up magic, and a true original. Ike envisions a world where people are able to lead decent lives, take artistic risks, and the villain is ultimately made to stand in the glare of stage lights. The audience’s gentle, wholesome justice is served with a wink and a champagne toast. One aspect of the movie’s charm that I haven’t seen talked about as much is that it succeeds in envisioning a community unified in camaraderie, justice, and pursuit of the good life through the arts. It’s a movie whose aesthetic sensibility embraces the wild call of possibility, and the tragedy of possibilities foreclosed. In one of the film’s tenderest moments, the working actors of the film’s Avant-Garde Alley weep tears, real tears, at the news of their colleague’s death.

This is a world envisioned and run by the talented alumni of the NYC DIY comedy scene circa 2016. Inspector Ike is ”New York City’s Greatest Police Detective,” whose mere shadow can set things straight, and his in-world reputation is that of a celebrity, a detective who can “solve a case without any clues or evidence[...] all on his own[...] and nobody even asked him,” who has never lost a case—but all these are secondary traits. What makes Ike great, the greatest, is his assured, gentle soul, deeply concerned with the wellbeing of the people closest to the case. He cares for your family, your cats, he recalls them by name. Ike protects people and they trust him in turn. As with Columbo before it, Ike’s concern is not the perpetuation of contemporary pro-police fearmongering about crime, urban blight, and the ultimate intractability of social issues, but a roaring fable of what fun we could all have if our justice system started taking a bit of a closer look at the obvious crimes of the (at least aspirationally) rich and famous among us.

I was very lucky to have the opportunity to correspond with Ikechukwu Ufomadu (writer, producer, “Inspector Ike”) and Graham Mason (writer, director, producer) over the past few weeks. The interview below has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

HPRL: In the Blu-ray edition commentary, Graham, you mention that you told Ike you thought he’d be funny as a detective character. Ike, can you tell us more about your influences in creating the Inspector? I’ve also heard Graham describe him as the apotheosis of a kind of eternal showbiz eminence character you’d perfected over the years in your stand-up. Can you tell us more about your process, your comedic/dramatic influences growing up? I found a kind of Alex Trebek quality to Ike that I wonder if you intended or not.

IKE: A lot of projects I’ve worked on over the years have involved alternating periods of concentrated research into the relevant subject matter and improvisational play to bring that research to life. Crafting the Inspector character basically followed that template. There was a lot of intuition and instinct that rested on a bedrock of research into the television worlds of Columbo and Police Squad. I was really fascinated by Columbo in particular. I didn’t realize all the episodes were in fact feature-length movies that ran off and on for some 30 years. The Alex Trebek quality you found in the Ike persona wasn’t exactly intended, but does make sense. There’s a lot about the Inspector and the Ike persona generally that draws inspiration from various figures who were able to hold court in the television medium across many decades—your Johnny Carsons, your Regis Philbins, etc. I’d certainly count Mr. Trebek among their number.

HPRL: This was all shot over ten! hot!! days!!! in August 2019, in Brooklyn, NY. I have very fond memories of BRIC and the neighborhood around it: Graham, are there any shooting locations you remember being particularly serendipitous?

GRAHAM: The most serendipitous filming location came through my friend Steve. I was trying to figure out where to shoot the interior locations, and Steve told me we could use an empty, unfurnished home in Greenpoint that he was about to remodel. We were able to set up camp at the house for a week and treat it almost like a mini soundstage. We shot the scenes in Harry’s apartment, Rita’s apartment, and the police station in different rooms throughout the house, and we even buried John Early in the backyard!

HPRL: As a former New Yorker, I ask that you please be as specific as possible with regards to subway stops, street names, and any top-notch bodegas in the area.

GRAHAM: The closest subway stop is the Nassau G in Greenpoint, which is quite close to Peter Pan Donut Shop, the best donut spot in the city, and also low-key one of the best egg sandwiches in the city, too.

HPRL: Ha!! My wife lived on the corner of Eckford and Driggs while we were still long-distance. That G stop was, like, the other end of the block. Small world. Was there any aspect of achieving the period look that you found particularly challenging? The DIY aesthetic is so beautifully realized here.

GRAHAM: One big moment in my preparation was realizing that most of the scenes in those old TV movies were shot on sound stages, and those stage sets have a kind of inherent shabbiness and very specific lighting that comes from all the lights being mounted to a grid on the ceiling.

We didn’t have the money to rent real stages or even build sets, so we intentionally tried to design the practical locations we were using to feel more “fake.” So for example, in many of the scenes the characters have lights aimed directly at the top of their head from above, very “grid”-style lighting. And in another scene that was supposed to be set at night, the gaffer taped blue gels over the windows, which looks totally bizarre and fake but in the case of our movie actually made it feel more like a “real” lost artifact.

HPRL: The Blu-ray commentary also mentions the centrality of improvisation on set. Do either of you have any favorite instances of successful improvisations, with regards to set, script, or character details, that were especially important in the making of this film? The cast seems to spark off of one another so readily.

GRAHAM: Yeah! Even though we were shooting extremely quickly, we were able to find times to do improvised takes or just play it a little looser. The scenes between Inspector Ike and the deputies were the most improvised parts of the movie, and I love those scenes so much, especially the cut where Ana Fabrega is magically sitting on Anthony Oberbeck’s lap. I think that’s my favorite little moment in the movie, and we figured that out on set. The part at the climax of the movie when Matt Barats as Harry says “Fuck you guys” (the first and only curse word in the movie) was definitely just Matt going buck wild at the end of a take and I suspect he didn’t think I would ever use it in the edit, but I loved the idea of dropping in one F-bomb 80 minutes into a basically PG experience.

IKE: There were a couple of scenes with Matt where just playing with the timing of our exchanges made for some tough takes to get through without breaking. In particular, telling Harry he was on kitchen patrol after he tried the Inspector’s chili was a fun, dry moment that was hard to get through with a straight face.

HPRL: A perennial topic in the social media discourse is whether or not a certain movie or TV show perpetuates pro-police attitudes in society more broadly. Did this enter into your considerations at all in the making of Ike? I’m a strong believer that satire serves an essential purpose in healthy political life. I also think, not to be reductive of your and their art, that movies like The Naked Gun did so much to normalize, or renormalize, the critique and constructive upending of authority figures’ position in society during (yet) another deeply fraught era of American history. They succeed in part because they make it OK to laugh at things that are otherwise overwhelmingly painful to bear. In this reading, Inspector Ike beautifully satirizes his real-world analogues by being so effortlessly and wholesomely good at what he does. He succeeds, in the end, by being totally unafraid to put down his gun when facing down the killer. I guess in a sense, I’m wondering if either of you shaped this film in any way in response to the social conditions of the past decade with regards to race, class, policing, and social justice?

GRAHAM: Yeah, I personally was very nervous that the movie might be misconstrued as “copaganda” or having a cavalier attitude toward what are obviously extremely horrific problems within our broken justice system. But very much to your point, we definitely were approaching the project as satire, taking the police procedural and making a bizarre alternate dimension version that hopefully takes the air out of the authority figures it’s depicting, and points out some of the inherent absurdity of the serialized “crime and punishment” format, which is so popular and at the same time often so repetitive and boring.

And specific to the Inspector Ike character, we very consciously modeled him after Columbo, who I’ve seen described recently on social media as something along the lines of “the only good cop”—by which I think they mean that he seems to have his own moral code centered around being kind to people who are in rough shape, and bringing people who are selfish and corrupt to justice. He’s very pro-kindness and nonviolent and I think Inspector Ike has that quality as well, also very much to your point.

IKE: Continuing Graham’s point, while Columbo is a police detective, he doesn’t rely much on the authority of his position in bringing people to justice. He leans more on his human qualities of ingenuity and persistence to get the job done.

HPRL: Absolutely, yes, beautifully said. Finally, one feature that ties together Columbo, The Naked Gun, and other named influences of yours are their serial nature. The detective protagonist is resurrected ad absurdum to continue to do wacky justice in an inequitable world. What I mean to ask is, when are we getting an Inspector Ike sequel? The Blu-ray edition booklet contains so many wonderful episode premises, would you consider reprising your work? I know this is an outgrowth of a character that has lived in many forms, in many forums, but will you bring him back to the Saturday Night Mystery Movie screen?

GRAHAM: We would love to make more installments of Inspector Ike, I love this world so much and I think there’s so much more we could do with it. So if you are reading this, please call your relative who works in development at Hulu and tell them to buy our show!

HPRL: “Just one more thing…” what are you two working on right now?

GRAHAM: I produced a micro-budget comedy feature called DAD & STEP-DAD that is currently touring around the country at various special screenings right now—keep an eye out for it! And I also have a couple feature film comedy projects that are out in the world trying to get financing, which is a tough process! Wish me luck.

IKE: I’ve been working on a new live hour of solo comic entertainment that I’ll be workshopping on its feet later in the summer and bringing to New York later in autumn.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IKE: a Q&A with Ikechukwu Ufomadu and Graham Mason