Daily Recco, May 10: It is The Good Place to be
The Good Place is the very best of what television can offer. This is a show that you can watch at your own pace. Binge it on Netflix or take it slow, your wish.
Comedy is usually at its best when it very closely resembles reality and remains plausible. When it is this way, it ends up cutting deep without delivering pain. The Good Place is a show cut out of sublime comedic fabric that ends up not only as great television but as a bright spot (literally and figuratively) in these increasingly dark times.
"Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot." That was something Charlie Chaplin said. And The Good Place is an excellent student of this concept. What greater long shot can be there when the show is based on questions over heaven and hell and the nature of the afterlife?
The title of the show is an allusion to heaven, but done so without having to become a slave to any one of the many religious or spiritual attempts to explain what happens to us when we die. The very fact that such a show can exist on Western television is a demonstration of the fact that its writers have carefully overcome the limitations posed by the Abrahamic finality to both life and the afterlife. It operates on the premise that death isn't just an end but just an important step in a process that continues after life is over.
The writing is heavenly (ahem!). The casting is supreme. The tone is sprightly and the visuals bright. What a show for our times! When you can manage to talk about heaven and hell in scenes that are already funny in terms of jokes per word, you have achieved something indeed. And all it took was 52 episodes over just four seasons to really overturn the notion that successful television today has to be about grand sets and huge budgets and dark settings.
US television legend Ted Danson shares top billing with Kristen Bell, who shines as an acid-tongued self-proclaimed trash bag. William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, D'Arcy Carden and Manny Jacinto play the other four main characters.
The Good Place is the very best of what television can offer. It is without question among the very best things on television anywhere in the world in a long time. This is a show that you can watch at your own pace. Binge it on Netflix or take it slow, your wish. But you must watch it. We can promise you won't regret it.