Posted in: Audio Dramas, TV | Tagged: Unlicensed, Welcome To Night Vale

Unlicensed Creator Joseph Fink Discusses Season 3, Influences & More

Welcome to Night Vale co-creator Joseph Fink on the third season of Audible audio drama Unlicensed, a Los Angeles supernatural noir series.

Welcome to Night Vale creators Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor's audio drama Unlicensed is now entering its third season on Audible, a Los Angeles noir series following unlicensed private detectives Molly Hatch (Molly Quinn) and Lou Rosen (Lusia Strus) on cases that take them to the dark corners of the city and even into the realm of the supernatural. Fink had a chance to discuss the audio drama's influences, what sets the third season apart, and much more.

What was the inspiration behind "Unlicensed"? Was it an interest in melding the private eye with ghost-hunting?

Unlicensed came from a few different places. Most of my shows start with the voices. And here I really wanted to write something for the specific voices of Lusia Strus, Molly Quinn, and TL Thompson. I thought each of their voices was so distinctive and interesting, and would be even more interesting when placed next to each other.

I've always loved a good detective story, and I have a deep love for Los Angeles. One in 35 Americans lives in LA County; it is a huge and diverse place. So I wanted to write something that explored all the parts of LA that don't usually get written about. No Beverly Hills. No Santa Monica. Instead, Azusa and Vernon and Kagel Canyon.

How is season three different from the past seasons?

Our goal with season 3 was to amp up the danger that Lou and Molly are put into. We wanted the stakes to be higher than they had ever been. We also didn't know if we would get to write more seasons after this, so we wanted to land the story in a nice ending, so that it would feel ok to leave it if we needed to.

I've wondered about your approach to the writing of the series for a long time. Can you talk about how you decided to write an alternating narration between Molly and Lou as opposed to straight dramatic scenes that "show" rather than tell where the characters interact and live with each other rather than narrate their sections? 

This is just our style. We've never written anything that is classic radio theater dialogue. Welcome to Night Vale, Alice Isn't Dead, Within the Wires, and Unlicensed. These all use this form of intertwining monologues to tell the story. It is a way of storytelling that allows us to play with language, with performance, with alternating points of view. I don't have anything against more traditional forms of audio fiction, but it's just not what we're interested in writing.

Unlicensed is streaming on Audible.

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