"I try to encourage people to obsess about the stuff I make, but I don't bother to check in to see if they are - I just take it for granted that they are."

Dan Harmon knows a little bit about obsessing, and engendering obsession. His NBC - later Yahoo! - show Community evolved from regular sitcom to geek treasure across its six seasons, and his Adult Swim original series Rick and Morty has already inspired a similarly fervent following.



Harmon is wary of engaging too much with his audience, though - not because he doesn't care, you understand, but because he cares a little too much.



"I only interact on Twitter now - I learned the hard way with Community that there's too much risk. There's a little bit of ego-stroking - but that's a certain drug that stays the same, and has the same effects on your system, and once you've had it, you've had it. More dangerous is this potential for all kinds of thoughts to be in your head that don't need to be there.

"On Reddit or Facebook or Tumblr, one person in a very large audience might write a 20-paragraph analysis of the trigger warnings that should be given before watching a Rick and Morty episode, and how traumatised they were.

"Because I'm a good person, I'm going to have that person's trauma in my head the next time I'm sitting in the writers' room. But the important thing to remember is that it's a completely disproportionate amount of feedback for one person to be able to give."

Travis P Ball for SXSW

Helping to quell Harmon's anxieties - somewhat - is a his working relationship with Adult Swim, which he describes as healthier and happier than his collaborations with NBC and Sony - and Yahoo! - on Community.

"NBC combined with Sony just made for too much course correction," he suggests. "Sony believed it was possible to make Seinfeld out of Community and I was the one in the way of that.

"...and at NBC, we were a ratings problem in their eyes, so they were always trying to figure out ways to either get rid of us, or make us be like a show that would get higher ratings, and so between those two giant kitchens - both full of cooks - there was certainly too much politicking and drama to make a good show.

"...and then you go to Yahoo! where they were so respectful that I was allowed to drive myself mad. I walked away from season six of Community saying, 'I really need a boss' - just one will be fine. Somebody to demand that I turn something in, and somebody that I can trust to tell me if it's working or not. If you just let me do whatever I want, it turns out that a lot of the misery is generated from inside of me.

"I think the happy medium is Adult Swim, where it's literally one guy in Atlanta, on a speaker phone. He's not saying at any step of the way 'I know more about what audiences like, and so I'm going to speak for them, and looking at this document - a representation of a television show that doesn't exist yet - I'm going to tell you what to do to make those people that don't exist happy' - and a lot of that goes on in network television."



Rick and Morty - though perhaps not entirely free of discipline - certainly has a wonderful sense of the unpredictable about it.



An adult animation charting the interdimensional exploits of Rick - a scientific genius, and ageing alcoholic - and Morty - his naive grandson - it's a bizarre comedic fusion of Back to the Future, and two of Britain's finest, Doctor Who and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

"When I was Morty's age, I got turned onto Douglas Adams," Harmon reveals. "Even moreso than Dungeons & Dragons - and other things that nerdy kids can fall back on in lieu of social acceptance - it was a truly healthy coping mechanism for me to be ushered into a universe bigger and more dangerous and more absurd than the one that I was living in.

"When we sat down to develop this show about a mad scientist, it was a very short amount of time before my mind went to spaceships and portals - because I wanted to make the universe as big as Douglas Adams' universe.

"Doctor Who is a big influence just in terms of Rick's character - I'm borrowing from that the concept that the madman is in control, and we don't really understand him and maybe never will."

Astrid Stawiarz for Turner Networks



Both Rick and Morty are voiced by the versatile Justin Roiland, an animator who co-created the series with Harmon. Their 'no rules' approach applies to the production process too - with Roiland often altering the script - or even throwing it out entirely - in the recording booth.



"There's a large amount of improv woven into his performances," Harmon confirms. "Sometimes what you're listening to might be Justin completely making something up - and sometimes it's a completely written line of dialogue."

It's this balance between true madness and controlled chaos that makes Rick and Morty such an endearing watch - as Roiland stumbles over certain lines, and the plots twist and turn in ever more outlandish directions.

"Sometimes there's an important plot point in a line and it needs to be read just-so," Harmon continues. "...or an important set-up to a joke that won't land if you don't use the proper wording.

"It's all mixed together in a way that makes it very charismatically indiscernible... and we do everything we can to protect that vibe."

Rick and Morty season one will air weeknights at 12am on FOX UK starting September 3, with season two following every Thursday at 11pm from September 10.

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