In 2014, Berninger and Besser moved to Los Angeles with their four-year-old daughter, Isla, and purchased a bungalow in Venice, not removed from the ocean. Tom got here alongside, too, and began figuring out of a guesthouse within the again yard. The three of them had been creating a tv collection primarily based loosely on Tom’s movie in regards to the Nationwide, however fictionalized. “The pitch was a present not in contrast to ‘The Monkees’, however extra trendy,” Berninger stated. “An actual, sincere take a look at the music trade.” Berninger put collectively a band and referred to as it Das Apes. He wrote new songs, a few of which ended up on his first solo report, “Serpentine Jail” (2020). They filmed a pilot, scouted places, took conferences with HBO. Ultimately, they spent almost a decade engaged on the present. “It was this limitless circle of pleasure and failure, pleasure and failure,” Tom advised me. Berninger stated, “We had been sober in regards to the probabilities of truly getting a TV present. But it surely felt like we received fairly shut.”
Lastly, within the spring of 2021, they gave up. “There was actual, real heartbreak,” Berninger stated. “Quite a lot of it was related to my brother. I felt chargeable for pulling him alongside on a protracted climb towards one thing that wasn’t going to work out.”