Dan Levy reveals the crime-show DNA behind Netflix comedy Big Mistakes

Dan Levy has explained that long-running procedural dramas helped inspire Big Mistakes, the Netflix crime-comedy he co-created with Rachel Sennott. Rather than reinventing the wheel, Levy says he leaned into the familiar television grammar of shows that audiences already understand instinctively.

Speaking about the series, Levy pointed to staples such as Law & Order and NCIS, whose tightly structured storytelling has shaped how viewers expect crime narratives to unfold. Big Mistakes borrows that scaffolding, then destabilises it with comedy built around incompetence, blackmail and the messiness of organised crime.

Borrowing a familiar blueprint

The appeal of the procedural, Levy suggests, lies in its reliability. Audiences know the beats, which frees the writers to subvert them. By grounding the show in recognisable crime structures, the comedy gains a stable platform from which to spring its surprises.

• Big Mistakes draws on the storytelling rhythms of classic procedural dramas.
• Levy cited shows such as Law & Order and NCIS as touchstones.
• The series mixes incompetence, blackmail and organised crime for comic effect.
• Levy co-created the show with Rachel Sennott for Netflix.

Comedy from instability

Where traditional procedurals reward order and resolution, Big Mistakes finds its humour in characters who are out of their depth. The tension between recognisable crime-show logic and the chaos of its protagonists is, by Levy's account, the engine of the series.

“There is a comfort to those shows. You know exactly how they work, which is precisely what makes it fun to pull the rug out.”

Background

Levy rose to international prominence as a co-creator and star of Schitt's Creek, a comedy celebrated for its warmth and sharply drawn characters. His move into a crime-tinged project marks a tonal shift while retaining the character-driven sensibility that defined his earlier work.

Streaming platforms have increasingly looked to hybrid genres that fuse familiar formats with fresh comic voices, betting that audiences enjoy the play between convention and subversion. Big Mistakes sits squarely within that trend.

What happens next: the series arrives on Netflix as a test of whether recognisable crime structures and comic instability can combine into a distinctive streaming hit, with attention likely to focus on how the Levy and Sennott partnership translates to screen.