New sitcom by UGA graduate, set in Athens evokes 'Seinfeld'

Scottie is surrounded by oddball family and friends, including a self-absorbed, "Oprah"-loving ex-girlfriend.

One episode features annoying new neighbors who keep asking to borrow Scottie's cellphone. ("It doesn't get more classic sitcom than that!" Hadjii said.) In another episode, his ex-girlfriend Diva (played by Atlantan Kaira Akita) castigates a squeamish Scottie for not sharing food offered him by her boss.

"We try to get humor out of real-life situations," says 32-year-old Hadjii, during a break in shooting the final two episodes last month. "In terms of comedy, I like to mix styles. Some episodes are more slapstick. Others go over the top."

The show has an easygoing pacing, quite different from the loud, jokey feel of "Tyler Perry's House of Payne," which is shot in Atlanta.

"We think Hadjii has a unique, authentic voice we haven't seen elsewhere," says Brett King, senior vice president for original programming at BET. "He has a real honesty in his storytelling. And it has a truly Southern feel to it when so many shows are based in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago."

BET has a kinship with Georgia. Thanks to a large African-American audience in metro Atlanta, the network gets some of its best ratings in the country here. It recently aired the reality show "College Hill: Atlanta" and is prepping a third season of "Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is," also produced here.

Over this past summer, a crew of 40 people produced the first 10 episodes of the series in Athens, on time and within budget, according to Nate Kohn, a UGA journalism professor who is Hadjii's mentor and a co-executive producer for the series. Among the Athens landmarks featured on the show are the Georgia Theatre, Junkman's Daughter's Brother, Wilson's Soul Food, and Pain & Wonder Tattoo Studio.

During a shoot of the season finale last month, the "Somebodies" crew takes over a Dollar Warehouse for a morning.

Producers set up two TVs to screen the action in a back corner amid mattress covers and popup hangers. Extras hang out at a table by a bin of basketballs ($4.75 each). The makeup area uses gift bags as a backdrop. Andy Rusk, an onset dresser, covers up the words "Bud's Best" on dozens of bags of animal crackers using 25-cent yellow price tags because the brand name hadn't been legally cleared before shooting.

Director Rusty Cundieff can't decide what Scottie and Jelly (played by Corey Redding) should have in their shopping cart as they talk about feminine products. First, Jelly plays with a pink rubber ball. That's too distracting and shows up poorly on camera. He then carries a toy farm set, but Cundieff deems it too unwieldy. Finally, Redding places three or four toys into the cart while he recites his lines. Between takes, each actor holds tiny orange portable fans to keep from sweating too much.

After 10 tries and nearly an hour, the scene — which might take up 30 seconds of screen time — is done.

Hadjii says he loves sitcoms and deeply admires the humor and story structure of "Seinfeld." "Somebodies" does evoke some of the idiosyncratic behavior of "Seinfeld's" characters. In fact, BET's King says someone in a focus group dubbed "Somebodies" a "Dirty South 'Seinfeld.' "

But Scottie and his friends are far nicer than Jerry or Elaine. When they get treated poorly at a diner by a white waitress, they just complain behind her back. When Scottie is tempted to yell at his annoying neighbors, he holds back.

"We try to treat everyone with some degree of respect," Hadjii said. "The characters are usually trying to do the right thing."

In 2004 and 2005, Hadjii filmed a low-budget movie called "Somebodies," which he set up as a pilot for a TV show. He got it into the Sundance Film Festival, where "people either loved it or hated it."

After Sundance, he was able to get an agent, who shopped the film around for a possible TV series. BET bit.

The TV series stars virtually all the same actors he used for the film. "A lot of the core characters consist of guys I did short films with in college," he said. "We also held auditions in Atlanta and Athens."

The film was never released, and now that the TV show is out, Hadjii said he wants it to stand on its own. "I think the TV show is a lot better. We as performers have grown and improved."