10 Items or Less (TV series)
10 Items or Less is an American comedy series created by Nancy Hower, Robert Hickey, and John Lehr. Partly scripted and partly improvised, the show starred Lehr as a less-than-successful businessman who returned home to run Greens & Grains, the family-owned supermarket, upon the death of his father. The series debuted on TBS on November 27, 2006. During its first season, it aired Monday nights at 11 p.m. ET/PT. The second and third seasons aired on Tuesday nights at 11 p.m. ET/PT. In November 2009, a blog posting stated the  show had been cancelled and would not be picked up for the fourth season. In 2015, the series was made available on Crackle. Summary. The series stars John Lehr as a failed New York City businessman who moves back to his hometown of Dayton, Ohio to take over the family supermarket following the death of his father. The show is set in the fictional supermarket known as Greens & Grains, located at 5th Street and Tiberius. Production. A detailed script was written for each episode outlining the overall story arc. However, the script was not shown to the actors; instead they  were provided with a loose outline of the plot, often finding out about it as they filmed. All dialogue in the show is improvised spontaneously by the actors on the set. A typical 22-minute episode was edited-down from roughly 30 hours of raw improvised dialogue and scenes. John Lehr has described their production style as "similar to Spinal Tap." At one point during the first season the actors demanded to see the script, but upon receiving it they decided as a group that they did not want to see the scripts again in the future. The series is  filmed in a real grocery store called "Jon's" in Reseda, California (formerly Vons), often with actual customers used as extras.