Unique premise helps 'Search Party' find its following

NEW YORK (AP) - Even the star and executive producers of TBS' "Search Party" agree it's not an easy premise to describe.

"It's like 'Scooby Doo,'" joked executive producer Charles Rogers. "But it's good," quipped actress Alia Shawkat (who is also a producer on the show).

What "Search Party" is about is a group of 20-something friends in Brooklyn searching for a missing friend from college. Shawkat's character, Dory, becomes particularly fixated on the mystery and in the end (spoiler alert) we find out the friend wasn't really missing at all.

And just when you think the point of the show is about how people can make something out of nothing, a murder occurs, launching a season two that focuses on the cover-up.

"There's definitely a really exciting conclusion to this season. You're going to want to know what happens next," added Rogers.

Shawkat, along with fellow executive producers Rogers, Lilly Burns and Sarah-Violet Bliss chatted about the show to The Associated Press ahead of Sunday's season finale.

AP: The series does poke fun at millennial stereotypes, that they're self-absorbed and expect shortcuts in life, but what do you really think of those assumptions?

Alia Shawkat: They fit with the timing of technology. We're the last generation that was raised without it and now have it and are very comfortable with it. We're not like still figuring it out. And I think that much information all the time affects the way you process, how you feel about anything in general, and how you handle things. And you don't necessarily know enough about anything to make a statement on it. But you do anyways.

Lilly Burns: I think there is like a virulent self-involvement that is existing in the world right now that I think comes from this social media version where everyone has to have the online version of themselves and capture themselves and take photos of themselves and think about the way that they're coming off at all times. And I do think that that's kind of particular to now and that we do get to have a lot of fun with.

AP: What are the challenges of writing a show like this?

Sarah-Violet Bliss: Season one we learned how to write a mystery and season two wasn't a mystery, it was how to get away with murder. So it's like, 'OK, now we have to figure out this different genre.' Season one was fun because it was playing with the tropes of mystery. We learned how to trick the audience.

Rogers: It was fun but horrible to write. It's really so hard to write a mystery and there was no mystery. If you only knew the places (the story) went that never saw the light of day.

AP: The show is really unique. Was it hard to pitch?

Burns: We made the pilot independently which isn't normally how it works. We made it like a small, indie film and pitched it to networks. That model, I think, allowed us to set the tone of the series.

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Online: http://www.tbs.com/shows/search-party

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This story has been corrected to show Shawkat is producer, not executive producer, and the spelling of Sarah, not Sara.

Follow Alicia Rancilio on Twitter at @aliciar