Peacock's New 'Ted' Series is 'Magical, R-Rated' Comedy, Says Producers (Exclusive)

Seth MacFarlane's Ted series is now streaming on Peacock, and the show's producers want fans to know that it is a "magical" and "R-rated" comedy adventure. The prequel show features MacFarlane back in his role as Ted, a degenerate teddy bear with a heart of gold and a mouth like a sailor. Max Burkholder (Parenthood) stars as young John Bennett, taking over the role from Mark Wahlberg, who originated the character in the Ted films.

Ahead of the show's premiere, PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with two of the show's producers and writers, Brad Walsh and Paul Corrigan, who opened up about crafting the new series. "I think the prequel was a great choice because it was this unexplored chunk of time in their lives," Walsh said. "Obviously, the tone was set by the films and some characters are set, but there is a lot of area for exploration there in the prequel series, and you just have to be mindful, obviously, that you're building a bridge to those movies, which exist.

"So it has to all make sense and be of a piece, but there was a lot of liberty there you could take and explore," he continued, "creating characters, a family around John and Ted, and also just seeing what a more innocent, younger John and Ted are as they sort of go through this process of experiencing the firsts of adolescent life. There's just a lot of firsts in that story, in that time of life, and so as we gather as a writing staff, the ideas come pretty quickly because that's a time when not only are things happening for the first time, but they feel really important and are sort of charged with a lot of stakes.

Corrigan added, "And we gave ourselves some freedom to fudge things a little bit, as long as we didn't completely contradict the movies, we were like, we could take some liberties because the stories sort of dictate that you have to at some point. So we tried to ride that line pretty well and I think it turned out okay.

Walsh later commented on the approach to keeping the show grounded while also being as outrageous as possible. "Seth is really smart about making sure that the world around Ted is quite realistic because Ted is so magical and he's a magical element at the center of this show," he said. "And so the juxtaposition of that with a grounded reality usually is what you want to go with. I can think of a couple times we sort of play with that and maybe fudge those rules but, in general, you want to make sure that not everything is heightened because then the whole show will be sort of on the moon.

Corrigan then offered, "One of the great things about the character Ted, is being sort of animated and a teddy bear, he can get away with things that I don't think you would want to hear coming from actual people, and so that's a lot of fun. It does sort of having the reality and then this heightened character that's animated gives you a lot of leeway with what you can say and do."

Viewers will no doubt pick up on the similarities between Ted and MacFarlane's hit animated shows like Family Guy and American Dad, which are intentional, Walsh says. "Seth wrote the pilot and it was really exciting to get that pilot from him and just see that he'd captured that tone and then expanded it into a new world," Walsh said. "And that pilot of his hits the ground running with some really hard jokes up top in ways that a lot of great shows don't do now. It's not a tone you see on television a lot, so it was a relief to us. It was fun to try to then work with that and try to make up shows that were consistent with that. And we think it'll be a relief to audiences just to hear some really hard jokes at fairly rapid pace.

Corrigan added, "And this is definitely R-rated, so that was one of the great things about being on Peacock is to have the freedom to explore that a little bit without constantly worrying about what you can and can't say. So that was nice." All eight episodes of Ted Season 1 will drop this Thursday, Jan. 11, only on Peacock.