The very first words you hear on TNT’s new legal dramedy “Franklin & Bash,” come from a hot blonde who slithers in skimpy lingerie and says, “I want you in my bed.”
The joke? The hot blonde’s merely an actress in a mattress commercial. A few seconds later, we see two lawyer dudes, Franklin and Bash, bragging that one of them could sleep with Marisa Tomei.
On “Franklin & Bash,” Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer play ambulance-chasing lawyers who join a white-shoe firm, then serve as its in-house rebels. Creator Kevin Falls and Bill Chais made sure that risque comedy — and not courtroom speechifying — was top priority.
“I wanted to do a Judd Apatow movie in a law firm,” says Chais, a former Los Angeles defense attorney who has written for “Shark” and “The Practice.”
“It really is an unabashed bromance,” says Falls, who searched high and low for actors with phenomenal rapport. “Much like you do when you cast a rom-com, we were looking for chemistry.”
The first person cast was Gosselaar, whose last series was the TNT legal show “Raising the Bar.” He plays Peter Bash, the better-dressed member of the pair who often makes at least a pass at respectability.
So in auditioning actors for the role of Bash’s partner, Jared Franklin, the creators found their man in veteran actor and “Robot Chicken” writer Breckin Meyer.
“Breckin walked in the [audition] room,” says Chais, “and there’s all these studio people, all these network people, Kevin and I, and our partners. And the guys hug each other just to say hello. In that moment, everybody just got it: these guys are funny together — they look funny together. And when they started doing their stuff, it became clear to us right then.”
But the show’s primary goal is clearly sexually-tinged laughter. Later in the episode, Franklin argues that salacious content can be distracting by having the actress from the ad strip and jiggle in court.
This sort of grandstanding, which “Franklin & Bash” employs with regularity, is inspired by some of Chais’ real-life experiences.
“I never had someone take their top off in court,” he says, “but on grandstanding and playing a jury, it absolutely goes back to my days of being a lawyer. There’s a real narcissistic quality to being in front of a jury. If you have this kind of showman quality, you’re gonna push it.”
Lest anyone find this showboating by way of a topless female sexist, Gosselaar is later seen getting out of a hot tub naked while partying with clients. He had to deal with something actresses usually have to endure: the embarrassment of being nude in front of an entire film crew.
“I don’t mind the way I look, but being in front of a hundred extras with a small piece of fabric in front of your junk isn’t necessarily the way I wanna spend my day,” says Gosselaar, 37. “Thankfully, Breckin wasn’t there. He definitely would have given me some ribbing.”
Gosselaar believes that his naked butt shot carried more credibility than other naked butt shots he’s seen and done.
“It’s not a gratuitous ass shot,” Gosselaar says. “As long as we stay true to the character, then it’s OK. It wasn’t like what I’ve done on other shows, where you go, ‘Oh yeah, look. There’s an ass. That really wasn’t needed, but there it is.’ ”
The creators hope that lust and laughs don’t drown out the cases.
“On ‘M*A*S*H,’ their attitude was, ‘everything’s funny but the war.’ We believe ‘everything’s funny but the cases.’ It became very obvious to us that if we don’t care about the clients, the cases and the outcome, then [viewers] are not gonna care about our guys,” Chais says.
As an example, Chais and Falls cite the season’s final episode, in which the head of the firm, played by Malcolm McDowell, gets in some hot water, and needs Franklin & Bash to help him out.
“In writing the script, I was having too much fun,” says Chais. “We looked at the first cut and said, ‘They don’t seem like they care enough about what they’re doing.’ It wasn’t their fault; it was my fault. So we recut it and shot some more stuff.”
So it’s clear what “Franklin & Bash” viewers can expect as their debut season progresses. The creators hope that Apatow fans become their primary audience, while those who enjoy a good legal drama will find much to appreciate as well.
“If anyone looks to our show for the kind of moments you might actually see in a courtroom, they might be disappointed,” says Chais. “But we really do try to tether this to reality. If we have a moment that seems big and funny, we want it to be smart, and tied to actually winning the case.
“But if you learn anything about the law in our show,” adds Falls, “then we haven’t done our jobs.”
FRANKLIN & BASH
Wednesday, 9 p.m., TNT