LAURELS GALORE

South Park has won five Primetime Emmy Awards since its debut in 1997. In 1999, the show’s creators released a feature- length film called TOP FAN FAVOURITE EPISODES

and directing credit on all but a few episodes since 2001.)

The mechanics of making the show haven’t changed much, but Stone and Parker have. The wild- haired punks from the 2000 Academy Awards have grown up: Stone telecommutes half the week to be with his wife and children in New York, while Parker’s office is strewn with the pastelcoloured toys of his three- year- old daughter.

In its 20th year, South Park offers a pointed and, surprisingly, still- potent platform for commentary on current events. New episodes typically draw around two million viewers, many of them the 18- to- 49- year- olds that advertisers covet, a showing that Comedy Central decidedly needs while its late- night lineup is in flux and other signature franchises such as Inside Amy Schumer are on hiatus.

“For a network that no longer has Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, having South Park is extremely important to us,” said Doug Herzog, president of Viacom’s Music and Entertainment Group, which includes Comedy Central. “With all due respect to Jon and The Daily Show, South Park is the foundation on which Comedy Central is built.”

If the earliest South Park episodes reflected a juvenile desire to see what they could get away with on television, their later work suggests that Parker and Stone have honed their ability to channel their growing exasperation with a polarised world into comedy.

Vernon Chatman, a comedy writer who has worked on South Park for more than 15 years, said t hat Stone and Parker have thrived by embracing their roles in “their right- brain, leftbrain relationship.”

“Matt has this sharp, analytical mind that’s focused and relentless,” he said. “Trey has the d r e a my, e moti o n a l storyteller thing.”

Chatman added, “To be in such a heightened, i ntense relationship, with so many stakes and so much pressure on it — the fact that they haven’t yet killed each other is incredible.”

Already Parker and Stone had spent this Monday in a multi- hour meeting with Chatman and Anne Garefino, an executive producer, talking through plot points for Member Berries and shooting them down. “If we only have three scenes left to write, that’s a win,” Garefino said. “It’s when you still have that whole last act…”

In the afternoon, Stone and Parker caromed from office to office in a building decorated with their trophies — South Park toys and memorabilia, framed posters from their Tony Award- winning Broadway musical, The Book of Mormon ( 2011) — while trying to bring Member Berries into focus.

For a few minutes Parker stepped into a recording booth to perform the voices of two football announcers introducing the new national anthem, while Stone directed him to be more excitable.

Parker writes in private, emerging occasionally to pull Stone from wherever he might be and ask for his help. In the writers’ room, the two creators were trying to pin down the motivations of Randy Marsh, the show’s ambivalent adult moral compass, as he grapples with a presidential race between two candidates he dislikes and decides whether he should try the addictive member berries or not.

Where should Randy be introduced to the enticing fruit: