In this day where television series tend to lean towards worlds inhabited by zombies and vampires, being transported in time to the 1960s or new spins on classic fairy tales, a show like NBC’s “Parenthood” is a rare thing. The Jason Katims-developed series, however, is doing just fine holding its own in its third season by weaving stories about the grounded-in-reality relationships in the world of the Northern California-based Braverman clan. As Katims told our Jim Halterman last week, despite not having the same issues to deal with as, say, “The Walking Dead,” there are still plenty of challenges in crafting a family drama in the 21st Century. During their chat, Katims talked about balancing comedy and drama, the crafting of a main character with Asperger’s syndrome and allowing the actors to feel as free as possible during shooting as well as teased some of the storylines currently playing out on the addictive drama.

Jim Halterman: In general, as you develop and create more series, does the job get easier in some ways or is it always just full of challenges?

Jason Katims: Well, I think it gets a little easier running shows. I don’t think it gets easier creating shows. I think running shows, as you do it over time, the job doesn’t change that much but you become a lot calmer doing it. [Laughs.] You learn to really trust and lean on all the incredible team that you get to work with – directors, producers, writers, etc. – that, I think evolves over time and does become easier. I think in terms of actually creating the show and doing the pilot, I don’t know that that gets much easier because that’s creating a world from the beginning and trying to figure out…often when you do these pilots you’re under pretty stressful time pressure and you’re trying to write it very quickly but you’re trying to create characters, create a format that you will want to and hopefully the audience will want to live with for many episodes and seasons.

JH: Looking at your credits, most of what you’ve done has been pretty grounded in reality…

JK: …there was ‘Roswell’ so we do have aliens…

JH: Right! But in this day and age, a straight family drama has become a rare thing. What challenges were there in developing “Parenthood” and not instilling a higher concept?

JK: It is very tough to do a show like that in a time when you have so many choices for viewership [and] so many places that people can go and it’s sort of getting people’s interest right away. You come in and you’re basically pitching ‘Here’s a show about people and their feelings.’ It’s not really the best pitch! I was really lucky to have partners like Ron Howard and Brian Grazer and also the good will of the network where I was doing ‘Friday Night Lights’ and I think there was a lot of trust that even though the concept of the show didn’t have a high concept idea, the network trusted that we’d be able to tell these stories in a way that was unique and compelling and they kind of encouraged me to do it so I was lucky in that regard. But it is tough to do a show like that.

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