Ryan on a fast track to top of showrunner pack

Four seasons is a long time in the life of a television writer. Just ask Shawn Ryan.

For Ryan, creator and executive producer of FX’s gritty cop show "The Shield," the past four years have been like high school, college and boot camp combined as he learned the art of showrunning through on-the-job-training with some of the most distinctive characters ever to inhabit a TV precinct.

By all accounts, Ryan was a quick study. No one was more surprised than he was when FX agreed to make a pilot out of his spec script for "The Shield." He’d always figured that spec would remain just that, a good work sample to show prospective employers. And he was just as surprised when then-FX entertainment president Kevin Reilly told him in the summer of 2001 that the show was picked up and that he would serve as showrunner.

At the time, Ryan had barely climbed a notch above the staff writer level after serving hitches on the WB Network drama "Angel" and CBS’ "Nash Bridges."

"I’d never done any editing or postproduction work. It was wild," Ryan says. "But I figured I’d rather screw it up than let someone else do it."

Fifty-plus episodes later, "Shield" wrapped its slam-bang fourth season last week with its ratings up from the previous year and, more importantly, with "best-season-yet" and other superlatives flowing freely from the show’s die-hard fans, particularly with regard to the writing.

But Ryan hasn’t had much free time to bask in the glow of a season well done. In the second half of this year, he’s poised to move up to the next plateau of showrunning as he tackles a new drama series, CBS’ "The Unit," as well as continuing as showrunner on Season 5 of "Shield." Those who know Ryan say he’s not only up to the task but that he’s well on his way to joining the uber-showrunner ranks of Dick Wolf, David E. Kelley and John Wells.

After living with the rogue cops of "Shield" for the past few years, Ryan says it has been "very freeing" to focus on the new world of the elite undercover operatives that inhabit "Unit," created by playwright David Mamet, who sought out Ryan after being impressed by "Shield." (Mamet also directed the two-part "Shield" episode "Strays" in 2002.)

"The first thing I did was decide that this show was going to be a different experience from that and that I shouldn’t try to re-create everything that we’ve done on ’The Shield,’ " Ryan says. "I have a lot of editorial rules set up on ’The Shield’ that we’re able to ignore for ’Unit.’ And having Mamet and his words to work off of is just incredible. It’s the equivalent of going to film school every day."

Collaborating with a writer of Mamet’s stature was inconceivable for Ryan during his salad days as a wannabe sitcom writer in the early 1990s. A native of Rockford, Ill., Ryan’s first exposure to Hollywood came in 1990 after he won a playwriting award in college that came with an opportunity to observe the writers room on the sitcom "My Two Dads" for two weeks.

By the end of his fortnight on the sidelines, he’d sold them a story idea and earned his first onscreen credit. He figured he was on his way, but then the phone didn’t ring for nearly five years. It wasn’t much fun at the time, but in hindsight he realizes the benefit of having to scrape a bit to find his way.

"I was a young, shallow guy. I had a facility for writing but not much of substance to write about," Ryan says. "Had I just waltzed out here and gotten steady work, I think things would have been very different for me."