Think of Craig DiGregorio as the unofficial fourth Raimi brother.

As a veteran of such television cult favorites as "Reaper" and "Chuck," the writer/producer has specialized in melding an off-kilter comedic sensibility to genre staples like horror and espionage, making him an ideal candidate to serve as the showrunner of "Ash vs. Evil Dead," the new iteration of the pioneering horror/comedy film franchise launched three decades ago by writer/director Sam Raimi, producer Rob Tapert and star Bruce Campbell.

With the contemporary take on "The Evil Dead" premiering Saturday on Starz, DiGregorio revealed to SPINOFF how the show tries to merge what's worked over the years with fresh new elements to bring out the grooviest side of Ash.

Spinoff Online: I look at you, and I’m pretty sure you’re not part of the original Raimi/Tapert brain trust that started the movies.

Craig DiGregorio: Yes, I’m a 65-year-old guy. No, I’m not.

So when it came to reinventing this franchise for a modern audience – figuring out the blend what it was that's made it work all along, and what you wanted to do to make it fresh and new – tell me about finding that sweet spot.

Well, it’s interesting, because I think it’s more of a tone issue for me. It’s like these movies all have such an interesting, weird, crazy tone to them – and that’s what I wanted to bring to the show most of all, was just that feeling of anything goes, we can do whatever we want. Nothing should be over-thought; it should always be fun. It should be the most insane 30 minutes you’ve spent watching television. You sit down, get your popcorn, start eating, and go, "Holy shit, they did that?" and then it’s over. Which I think the movies are kind of like that too, because it’s just a non-stop action ride.

With all those things in mind, tell me about the overall story for the season, because you are telling a bigger story all along the way.

You’re telling a serialized story, but you want to keep it simple. Like, you want to keep the overall story simple, since all of the stuff that’s happening is so crazy. The story this season is Ash – aging Lothario, chainsaw – calls back the Evil Dead in the dumbest way possible, as he’s born to do, and spends the season trying to put them back, and realizing how I can do that – just how sort of gullible and stupid he is, yet he’s still this sort of amazing superhero, who’s really good at killing monsters. So it’s about putting the Evil Dead back.

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I guess in a greater sense, the first season is about a guy who’s never had a relationship with anybody. He’s been hiding for 30 years. He never had a relationship with a girl. His only girlfriends we saw, we’ve seen him with, have all been killed. Since then, he’s just been kind of hiding. So he’s never had a relation with anyone. So a lot of the first season, if you look below the surface, is about him forming a relationship with these two sidekicks he has.

What was the biggest risk you took in telling this story, do you think?

The finale. Ash is a reluctant hero, and at the end of the day, you have to choose how reluctant he is, and that’s sort of what we battled with a little bit. I think it turned out pretty great. I either a) have to say that or b) have to convince myself that that’s the case. But I do. I really do. I think we made a really interesting, fun choice in the finale.

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Either early on or in the process, what was the key thing that Sam Raimi said to you that proved very valuable throughout the entire duration of making the show?

That the tone of the movie is always like a do-it-yourself, kind of like, just renegade-style, and he always wanted to keep that up. There’s sort of a -- this sounds stupid to say -- it’s like rock music, kind of. I don’t know if he said it those exact terms, but you just kind of want to just go and do. Don’t overthink it, just go do it. Make the episodes fun and crazy. Keep the bullets real so that you’re never doubting that these creatures are scary and horrifying. Also, keep Ash … Ash. Make sure that he is that blow-hard asshole, that’s still the most charismatic superhero.

You already had in Ash, in the form of Bruce Campbell, a pretty fully formed character. Tell me about finding the funny and unique dimensions in all the characters you surrounded him with, their fun quirks, and why they were going to work well opposite him.

We wrote a few characters around him. Then, as we started casting Ray [Santiago] and Jill [Marie Jones] and Lucy [Lawless], and all these people around him, we sort of molded the characters to them a little bit more. So for instance, Kelly, played by Dana [DeLorenzo], we realized what she was really good at, so we could shift her character a little bit. Same with Ray, same with all of them.

It’s not hard to have fun characters to play off of Bruce, because Bruce is such a fun guy to be around, just as a person and as a character. Ash is a really fun character, doesn’t take anything too seriously. So I think that was one of the easier parts, was making the characters around him sort of fun and funny. The hard part was making the whole world come together and keeping that tone – because it is a very strange tone.

"Ash vs. Evil Dead" debuts Saturday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Starz.