Crackle may be the streaming network that Jerry Seinfeld and Joe Dirt 2 built, but the streaming service is taking a big, ambitious swing into sex, violence, race, money, power, tech and Latin America with its new drama series StartUp.

The series, which will drop a 10-episode season in one binge on September 6, intertwines the stories of a crooked FBI agent (Martin Freeman), a venture capitalist with a dilemma (Adam Brody), a tech entrepreneur developing the next bitcoin (Otmara Marrero) and a young Haitian gang leader (Edi Gathegi) in the seedy Miami underworld.

If you recognize Crackle, an arm of Sony Pictures Television, it’s probably for Jerry Seinfeld’s long-running interview series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee or for the original film Joe Dirt 2: Beautiful Loser that racked up more than a million views in its first five days last year. With StartUp, Crackle is moving into territory that it hopes will get traction on issues like income inequality and tech culture.

We sat down with Sony Pictures Television EVP and Crackle chief Eric Berger to talk about the streaming network and its new series.

DECIDER: So you’re in the U.K. right now. Did Sony send you over to fix Brexit?

ERIC BERGER: [Laughs.] Yeah, I’m almost done! It’s a crazy mood here.

Are you in production on a series there?

I have some meetings here with our Sony Pictures Television people from around the world. We all converged in London for some meetings about digital and technology and the evolution of our TV business. We will be in production here shortly on Snatch.

Is that based on the film?

Right, it’s based on the Guy Ritchie film. It’s taking the spirit and the world and the mood and the writing style of that movie and telling over a longer period in episodic television.

Will its relationship to the Snatch film be similar to what Noah Hawley is doing with Fargo?

It’s similar in that it’s borrowing the world created by the film but with new characters and a new storyline. That will be on our 2017 slate for 10 episodes.

You started out with Sony in mobile gaming, right?

That’s right. When I came in, Sony was making the transition to handsets to applications. Some of that was based on IP (intellectual property) that we still do like Wheel of Fortune. Some of it was based on movie titles like Spider-Man and James Bond. Some of it was original intellectual property. That’s all still part of our business today.

Did you move to TV, or is that all the same division now?

We moved into TV. It was a separate digital organization at the time that became a part of the TV organization. From mobile games, we started producing mobile video services and then video for online — YouTube channels, a comedy channel, a movie channel, some short-form television. In parallel, Sony had purchased Grouper and made it Crackle. We transitioned Crackle from short-form video and user-generated video to premium video with an advertising model — licensing movies and creating original premium content.

Sony Pictures Television makes a lot of shows for other networks like The Blacklist for NBC and Better Call Saul for AMC. Are Crackle’s originals developed in the same way?

Yeah, it’s almost like a different label within Sony Pictures Television. The content is created specifically for Crackle like a network with its own production studio. Shows like The Art of More or StartUp or Snatch are developed specifically by and for us, so we can produce for our brand and manage the advertising experience from end to end.

Is the idea that you will continue to do that exclusive of buying shows in the market the way NBC or AMC would?

We have produced all of our own tentpole shows or commissioned them from Sony Pictures Television. For example, SuperMansion is a stop-motion animated comedy that is in production on a second season right now with Bryan Cranston, Keegan-Michael Key and Seth Green that’s produced by SPT.

Sports Jeopardy is another where Dan Patrick hosts and we that we produce as a weekly for Crackle. We just made a deal to air it on NBC Sports Network each night after Olympics coverage, and this fall it will air after NHL hockey games.

So you’re licensing in and out of Sony but focusing on controlling worldwide rights.

Exactly.

I didn’t realize until I started getting ready for this interview that Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee had been around since 2012. Did it come before Crackle?

No, we started it. We didn’t know what we had, and Jerry Seinfeld didn’t know what we had. The original marketing campaign was nothing more than a post on the Seinfeld Facebook page, which we run. We do two seasons a year, so we’re in the eighth season with that now.

Why did you decide to enter Comedians with Cars in the regular Emmy categories instead of in the new short-form Emmy categories?

We feel like the show is there quality wise and holds its own against other variety shows. Also, the short-form category that started this year is for 15 minutes and under, and some of our episodes can run 20 minutes or longer.

How did you get from making an expensive show like that to deciding to make a larger-budget drama series?

We think of Crackle as a general-entertainment TV network with longform dramas, half-hour comedies, movies and unscripted. Comedians in Cars and Sports Jeopardy are in that unscripted category, and SuperMansion is a half-hour comedy. We felt like it was important to have tentpole dramas and movies to go with that. We have produced six movies, including Joe Dirt 2. Every time we put the original on Crackle it did well, and the new one has done well.

Was that a $10 million or $12 million indie budget or closer to a traditional feature budget?

We haven’t talked about the budget, but it was closer to an indie.

The Art of More last year with Dennis Quaid was Crackle’s first big drama. How did that come together?

We had been doing half-hours and were looking for a drama that would be special and would be a world we hadn’t seen before. It’s set in the auction world, and we go into the world through an ex-soldier who was involved in smuggling rings. It exposes a seedy underbelly of the auction world and how those artifacts are traded in a world with this glossy veneer.

Did you see a point in time in the last few years when the market changed to a point where a film actor like Dennis Quaid would do a series for a start-up network like Crackle?

I think it was with House of Cards on Netflix. The publicity around that really opened the door for a lot of people to say that streaming is a legitimate place where consumers are watching content and is a place to tell great story in way where people can consume as much as they want on any device in any location.

Was that show budgeted and developed the same as you would have for AMC or FX.

Yeah, the quality level of the production is as good as you’d see on other networks. We sold The Art of More to broadcast and cable networks in international markets.

Are the ad loads on Crackle comparable to Hulu or network OTT apps?

Historically, our ad loads are about half of the ad-loads on television. We’re doing our dramas as something we call “break-free,” which keeps consumers engaged in the programming while still having advertising. The advertiser gets a greater voice. There are five ad breaks during an episode, but it’s only one ad in each break.

Is the idea to grow enough originals to launch a premium version without ads?

Right now we’re committed to the ad model. Bringing great content to 25 different devices for free has been a big part of who we are the last few years.

Why does the model of making and distributing shows make more sense for you than producing a show and selling it to NBC the way Sony Pictures Television does?

It’s a portfolio strategy. We’re very much in the business of making high-quality television for other networks, but we’re also a company that owns a streaming service in Crackle that’s in 21 countries and three languages that’s poised for further growth around the world. One isn’t necessarily better than the other.

What metric do you use to evaluate how consumers are watching Crackle?

We look at the aggregate number of people and we look at the level of engagement — how much time they spend streaming and how many shows they’re watching. We like to see that 50 percent of people who came to Crackle to watch The Art of More went on to watch other shows.

How many viewers do you have in whatever terms you can describe?

We have about 18 million viewers U.S. and international.

Are people watching primarily on TV-connected or mobile or web?

Connected TVs — game consoles, streaming devices like Roku, and smart TV — is 68 percent of viewership. That is followed by mobile and then web. The living room is the big hub for longform premium content.

I saw the pilot for StartUp, which you are premiering in September, and it’s a big, ambitious show. Are you expecting to see a big conversation around it?

It’s an interesting conversation-starter that taps into so many things that are happening in the world right now. Our audience is relatively young, many starting their careers, and they are looking for characters they can relate to who are building momentum in their lives and in their jobs. You see that in all the leading characters in StartUp, who all three set out with the best of intentions and make interesting choices. One of the larger issues about how technology is created is that it’s not all fancy VCs in cool offices in Silicon Valley. Miami has a huge tech scene right now, and it’s happening with people from different classes. It’s happening in Latin America.

When StartUp premieres in September, there will be other shows on other networks starting at the same time. How do you talk internally about how to make your potential viewers aware of a show like that?

We work closely with our distribution partners to get close to the customer. Instead of spending money on TV and billboards, we’re getting close to our customers with companies like PlayStation, Xbox, Apple and Roku where the consumption of shows like this is happening. It’s a tech-savvy audience to begin with, and the content is relatable to that audience. We’re market with social media and social influencers.

How important is it to be able to buy something like the front-page wrapper on Roku on your launch date?

It’s important. We’re working closely with those partners to take advantage of opportunities like that. Those partners — particularly the game consoles — have very loyal communities, and having the partner get behind a show can really influence that community.

[Watch Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee on Crackle]

Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider. He is also a contributing writer for Signature and The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.