The Good Place

The Good Place is a fantasy-comedy that was first broadcast on NBC in the Fall of 2016. Unlike most TV comedies, it is serialized, with a continuing story that flows from one episode to the next. It is filmed without a laugh track. The show has six characters. Two of them Janet and Michael (Ted Danson), operate a post-mortem world call the Good Place, and the other four, Eleanora (Kristin Bell), Chidi, Tahani, and Jason, are recently deceased humans who are bewildered to find themselves in the place. I find this a highly original show. It deals with issues rarely seen in TV comedy: death and the afterlife, guilt and responsibility, but does so in highly amusing ways (One running joke is a spell that overrides swear words with innocuous ones like "fork" and "shirt", much to the irritation of characters who really feel a need to sound off). It has a unusually diverse cast, three of the six main characters being Filipino, Asian-Indian, and Senegalese. Since Chidi is a former philosophy professor, it also has an intellectual side as he tries to make sense of his new eternal dwelling place. In contrast to the well-behaved "Good Place", we have frequent farcical flashbacks to the characters' wild former lives, a la "Lost". For viewers looking for something different, I quite recommend this show.