Comedy comes home

A comedy airing on the Fox network this winter includes a reference to Algonquin -- as in Algonquin Regional High School. In another scene, shot at a Celtics game, several locals -- family and friends of the scriptwriters -- appear as extras. Another shot shows a monkey wearing a "Big Dig" T-shirt made by one writer's parents, who own a Faneuil Hall cart business.

Maybe only aficionados of Boston, especially the western suburbs, will get the Massachusetts jokes woven into episodes of "Unhitched," but the pilot written by two friends who graduated from the Northborough school back in 1988 was good enough to attract the attention of the bigwigs at Fox.

Directed by the famously funny Farrelly brothers, Peter and Bobby, the comedy is based in Boston and centers on a group of thirtysomethings back on the dating market after a long hiatus. It is written by Chris Pappas and Mike Bernier, who grew up in Northborough and Southborough.

"Most of the time when you write, you always use a little bit of everyone," said Pappas, who pitched for the Tomahawks in a year they won the state baseball championship. "If I came clean, everyone in town would be after us."

The show is scheduled to first air on a Wednesday night sometime after the Super Bowl in February. It stars Rashida Jones from "The Office," Craig Bierko from "Cinderella Man" and "Boston Legal," Shaun Majumder from "24," and Johnny Sneed from "The Guardian" and "Fever Pitch."

"It has always been our dream to create our own TV show," said Bernier, who prepared graves at Southborough Rural Cemetery on Route 85 while a teen.

"We took a little bit of an inventory. We have some friends and family who had been married and all of a sudden found themselves 35 and single," said Bernier, 37, a married father of three. "This is not like dating in your 20s. There really is a lot of comedy and a lot of heart underneath that subject matter."

Since they received word in May that Fox picked up the show, the two have been busy hiring a writing staff and developing new ideas for the series. They have started writing scripts -- working in Palm Springs earlier this month -- and aim to film the 12 shows between Labor Day and Christmas.

The success is exciting for the writers, their families, and their friends, a group of a dozen guys who have stayed in touch since high school. A few of those friends make their debut in the pilot filmed April 1 during a Celtics game at the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston.

"We sat right behind Rashida Jones. I'm wearing a green baseball hat. When she's talking on the phone and you look over her left shoulder you can see Ted for seven or eight seconds, and if look to the right you can see me. It's the one and only time we'll be on TV," Paul Audett, who met Bernier in the fourth grade, said proudly of his part in the pilot sitting next to fellow childhood friend Ted Coyle.

"I think it's amazing. I know it's a tough business out there but I knew they had the talent to make it," said Audett. "I've already spread the word to everybody I know."

Having something to show for their creativity has been a long time coming for the pair, who have been collaborating for nearly a decade and have sold eight screenplays that are still in the production stage. They're making a good living, but couldn't really prove it -- until now.

"They've been very successful because they've sold movies, but none of them have been made," said Pappas's mother, Marcia, who operates Christmas ornament and T-shirt carts in Faneuil Hall with her husband, William. "You can be very successful but not have anything really to show for it, which is frustrating."

The writing duo's family and friends are not surprised with their career path. Pappas was known as a clown and a dreamer. Bernier had a dry sense of humor and was great at impersonations.

"Mike has the best sense of humor, but he was not one of those outwardly funny kids," said his mother, retired Medfield teacher Rita Bernier. "He would sit and observe and all of a sudden there would be a comedy routine about something insignificant. He's more quiet funny."

Pappas, who grew up on Davis Street in Northborough, has been creating comedy since he spoofed television ads for The Boston Globe as a teenager. A former employee of what is now Shrewsbury Health & Racquet, he began his career as a script reader for Oliver Stone after earning a film degree from Rochester Institute of Technology.

"It's a very interesting profession, but it's also scary and daunting. If anyone said to me, 'I want to be a screenwriter,' what do I do, I'd say, 'Turn your car around and go home,' " Pappas, who got married in January 2006, said with a chuckle. "You really have to have thick skin to come out here and do this. You don't know when a paycheck's coming, but there's nothing better than to make your own schedule and to do what you love."

Bernier took a different approach. A former mutual fund and Monster.com salesman living in Franklin, he took Pappas's dare and moved his family out to California in 2003 when his wife, Ellen , was pregnant with their third child. Bernier and Pappas had spent the previous five years writing together long distance.

"It was risky and we knew it was risky, but we both sort of wanted to try it. We both knew if it failed we could come back. To not try out it was more risky," Bernier said.

"I'm glad we did. The writing career is up and down. There are just no guarantees, there's no safety net, and there are no promises. But it's fun and it's very fulfilling."

Bernier and Pappas said they share the same comedy sensibility, a brand that requires watching Mel Brooks movies over and over again. "A lot of your sense of humor gets molded when you're young," Pappas said.

The friends put in a pretty typical day in their Santa Monica office, a converted garage. They write their outline and first draft over the course of several weeks, working from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m . Then they spend a few weeks in a secluded place while they whittle that draft down to the finished product.

"We work 13 hours a day and watch the Red Sox or the Patriots, whoever is playing, and we sculpt it," Pappas said.

"Then you type 'The End,' " Bernier said with a laugh. "That's exciting."