All four had worked at the groundbreaking digital blog Gawker in its final years and experienced, as Jefferson put it, the “roller coaster of high highs and low lows” that came with the job, as well as the controversy and criticism that dogged the site because of its no-holds-barred reporting and essays. During its run from 2002 to 2016, Gawker regularly exposed the hubris, hypocrisy and misdeeds of the famous, wealthy and powerful. That those stories were often steeped in snark only added to the fury they sparked. Jefferson and Read had sold a scripted series to Apple titled Scraper that was based on the inner workings of Gawker, and the quartet, along with a handful of, as Carmichael puts it, “very accomplished, amazing screenwriters and playwrights on Broadway,” were producing scripts for the first season. Scraper was not a hagiography.…