Benders
IFC
Premieres: Oct. 1
Airs: Thursdays at 10pm ET/PT
Who’s In It? Andrew Schulz, Lindsey Broad, Chris Distefano, Mark Gessner, Ruy Iskandar
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Bar-league sports are a comedy gold mine, and IFC’s new scripted comedy Benders digs deep into the world of Boston buddies who are obsessed with their very amateur ice hockey team. Co-creator Tom Sellitti says Benders and its stories were inspired by his own experiences on the ice. “We had a jersey that we were getting, and it was supposed to be a bullet, and instead it looked like a giant penis,” Sellitti says. “And from that [the show] kind of just took off, and we started telling stories and put it together.”
The friends’ banter and trash talk is good, even if their hockey skills aren’t. “We’re supposed to be horrible, though,” Schulz says. “They asked us at the audition, like, ‘You guys are good?’ And we’re like, “Absolutely, we’re good.” They lied. “We had to hire consultants to teach them how to skate badly,” co-creator Jim Serpico says. “It turns out they get on the ice, they fall down, they don’t know what to do, and we waste all this money on consultants.”