David E. Kelley Talks About Why He Had To Make ‘The Calling’

David E. Kelley is known for hooking television audiences with suspenseful and unpredictable storylines and characters, and he certainly hit the mark with his Peacock series The Calling.

Based on Dror A. Mishani’s Avraham Avraham book series, the investigative drama is so gripping that it’s hard to stop the binge once you start. Thankfully, the streamer dropped all eight episodes at once on November 10.

When Kelley read the first book in Mishani’s four-part series, “The Missing File,” he was hooked. He described the books as “riveting and emotionally complicated.”

“I read the first book and loved it. I put it down, and that was the end of it. It didn’t jump at me as one that would be easily adaptable for the screen. But I loved the book, and I loved the character. Avi is a deeply mysterious, spiritual and compelling detective, unlike any protagonist I’ve encountered before.”

He then went to work on two massive hits: the Netflix series, The Lincoln Lawyer, based on the bestselling novels by Michael Connelly, and HBO’s The Undoing, based on the book “You Should Have Known” by Jean Hanff Korelitz.

Kelley has a knack for gripping storytelling, and his resume is littered with TV hits like Big Little Lies, Anatomy of a Scandal and the highly-anticipated Love and Death.

In this case, Kelley couldn’t stop thinking about Mishani’s book and its protagonist, NYPD Detective Avraham Avraham. “While I put the book down, the book wouldn’t let go of me, especially the character, Avraham.”

He’s a unique detective with a superpower; it’s as if he can see through people beyond the lies they tell themselves and others. Avraham can see directly into peoples’ souls, and what he sees is often dark. Still, he maintains his belief in the goodness of humanity. This ability leads him to the truth, and he’s a master at getting people to confess their sins.

The mystery centers on a missing boy, and as Avraham investigates, everyone appears to be a suspect; his family, friends and neighbors each have secrets of their own.

For The Calling, Kelley is very hands-on and serves as writer, executive producer and showrunner. He put together a heavyweight Hollywood team that includes Academy Award-winning director and executive producer Barry Levinson (Rain Man) and co-composers Hans Zimmer and Steve Mazzaro.

“It was a home run for me to have Barry Levinson wanting to direct this,” said Kelley. “He’s one of my favorite directors. He can move plot and character with dramatic and comedic turns at once, and I’ve always felt him to be a genius. And then Hans Zimmer said he wanted to do it, and I’m just pinching myself.”

When asked how he picks and chooses what books to adapt, Kelley pauses briefly before answering. “It’s an inexact science. The first question I would ask of any series is, ‘Why this one and why now?’ Assuming I can satisfactorily answer that for myself, the next question is, ‘Is this a world I’m going to enjoy writing about? Are these characters I’m going to enjoy spending time with?’ The Lincoln Lawyer and The Calling were very different. The Lincoln Lawyer had very flawed but likable characters, and we did that during Covid. I felt the audience needed some escapism to feel good about the world. And I’m addicted to legal stories. I’m fascinated by the law. That was an easy one to sign up for; the combination of law, Michael Connelly and filming L.A.’s colorful palette.”

When asked how he writes such tightly knotted whodunits, Kelley at first attributes credit to the authors’ books he culls stories from. But the truth is, adapting novels into TV series is no easy task. He acknowledges the added challenges of writing in the current and crowded streaming landscape. “The audience has become so savvy, and there are so many good shows to watch with good writers. The audience is well-educated, and you have to come up with something new. There are many good mysteries in the marketplace now, and that’s the first burden we must meet. It has to be intricate storytelling, or the audience will get ahead of you.”

With Mishani’s books, Kelley explained how drawn he was to the author’s writing. “He wrote all the characters as protagonists, and then some turned out to be more flawed than originally perceived, and we embraced that.”

The phenomenal cast of The Calling includes Jeff Wilbusch (Unorthodox), Juliana Canfield (Succession), Karen Robinson (Schitt’s Creek), and Michael Mosley (Scrubs).