Indie Spotlight: ‘Choose Your Own McGurskey’ Adds Interactivity To Its Police Parody

We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now. Read previous installments here.

The baddest cop on the force is back in action and ready to dish out justice to anyone who dares cross him…or is he? The comedy group known as BORT is behind Choose Your Own McGurskey, an inspired comedy series that is one-half satire of the cop procedurals of the 70s and one-half choose your own adventure series.

Choose Your Own McGurskey follows the story of “Crazy Eyes” McGurskey, portrayed by Ted Limpert (who is one-sixth of BORT). As you may have guessed based on his nickname, McGurskey is a loose cannon, and two years after he suffered a nervous breakdown, he’s back on patrol and ready to lock horns with some former foes. At its heart, Choose Your Own McGurskey is a satire of old-school lo-fi cop shows, and on that most basic level, it succeeds. The jokes are plentiful and Limpert’s expressive performance adds additional humor.

Where Choose Your Own McGurskey really distinguishes itself, however, is through its interactive elements. At the end of each episode, viewers are presented a branching path for McGurskey, and the choices they make change the order of the show’s episodes. Depending on the videos you select, you can shift McGurskey’s fate and affect whether he truly is “back” or not. In total, there are 17 episodes to discover; I recommend poking around to find them all.

OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT

• Erica and Elray. A woman must put up with her wirecracking domestic robot.
• Nightlife. This show dives into the world of professional party promoters.
• Life Interrupted. Former child actors star in this series about…a former child actor.

Got a series you’d like to see featured in the Indie Spotlight? Be sure to contact us here. For best coverage, please include a full episode in your e-mail.