Comedy series "The Home" filmed in Richmond

Jan. 27—While "The Home" may be "the last stop" for the residents of Park Ridge Assisted Living, Richmond was the first stop for creator of the workplace comedy Darren Zancan.

Created by Eastern Kentucky University alumnus Zancan, the "The Home" is a workplace comedy following the misadventures of the staff and residents of a nursing home called Park Ridge Assisted Living. Helmed by Zancan's locally based DMZ Productions, the series was entirely filmed in Richmond.

Founded by Zancan in 2012, DMZ Productions initially started working in the corporate world, but has grown into producing more creative content as well.

"We're a video production and multimedia company. We also do social media marketing. Our bread-and-butter is video storytelling. We work with companies and schools and restaurants across the country... We travel around the country and do a lot of corporate work and recently we've created DMZ Films for our more creative pet projects that we wanna work on outside of the corporate world," Zancan said. "

DMZ Productions has partners in California, New York, Colorado, Indiana, Florida, and here in Kentucky.

Since creating a separate brand for creative work, DMZ has produced "The Home," a documentary about Lexington's Kentucky Theatre, and a script for a Christmas movie, among other projects.

"The Home" is a personal project for Zancan. The comedy is based off of his personal experiences working at a nursing home in Indiana.

"In my previous life, I managed a nursing home for about a year. During that time there — I tell people this all the time — the things I experienced there in a day could give you chapters in a book. While I was there, I kind of just took this mental/physical log of these over-the-top experiences," Zancan said.

Zancan wanted to adapt his experience for years. With COVID-19 came opportunity, as Zancan and his writers had a sit down to discuss the show. In their enthusiasm, 50 episodes were outlined in just five hours.

While the series is primarily a comedy, the series has its fair share of emotional depth and development. Most of that stems from character interaction and the bleak setting of the titular workplace. Some of the experiences of the characters on the show are directly based on some of the hurdles Zancan encountered at the nursing home he worked at.

"This is your last stop. We've kind of made it into a joke on the show," Zancan said. "There's so much real symbolic nature to it. It was easy to write because I was drawing on personal experiences. Though it is a comedy with a lot of comedic elements, there is a lot of relationship building in this."

One such relationship Zancan has drawn on for the series, is a friendship he had with a resident suffering from memory loss.

"The main character Ryan builds this relationship with James, an Alzheimer's patient. As the show goes on, you're gonna see this relationship in every episode of the show they're together. A little bit more of that relationship is shown on screen. He (Ryan) kind of hits a breaking point when he experiences his first death," Zancan said. "This is all based on things I experienced. I got really close with one resident and when I came into work one day, there was a name on the whiteboard."

Zancan has stayed in touch with many of the people he worked with at the nursing home. Filming and editing is complete for the first four episodes of the show as well as a music video. Now the series is being pitched to streamers and studios. The popularity of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu has provided fertile ground for potential television shows.

"The streaming world is where it's at. I'm so thankful that this is the world we're living in. Ten years ago, it would have been network-or-bust or YouTube. Now there are so many outlets and so much potential for these kind of shows to have a home, no pun intended," Zancan said.

Provided the series gets picked up for distribution, Zancan plans on keeping the production around Richmond. The community means a lot to him.

Zancan earned his bachelors in journalism and broadcast electronic media at EKU in 2011. He went on to receive his masters at Medill School of Journalism the following year. Zancan described a great support system from his professors in the broadcasting department at EKU. Chad Cogdill, one of those professors, described what it was like having him in class.

"He was wiser than his years. I always admired his willingness to get things done and just go at it," Cogdill said.

It is important to Zancan that DMZ Productions remains in Kentucky. He spoke about the artistic and economic benefit of producing content locally.

"It's important to me to bring more artistic projects here. There's a lot of good production companies and talented people here. Back in the day you had to go to Los Angles or New York or Chicago. Now there is a versatile way of making things. You don't have to go there, you can come here. We flew everyone in and filmed in Richmond. That's my hope with a lot of our projects. I wanna keep it local. It gives back to the economy and raises the profile of where we're at. I want to make this company a real Kentucky staple and take pride in doing projects here," Zancan said.

The trailer for "The Home" can be found on DMZ's Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/DMZProductions.