Mike Schur isn’t sure The Office could survive the streaming era if it launched today.
The NBC broadcast comedy famously took time to find itself; “The Dundies,” often credited as its breakthrough episode, was its season two premiere (and seventh episode). Today, Schur argues, a comedy that didn’t click in its six-episode first season might never make it that far. Streamers need viewers to finish episode one, then click on episode two, then episode three — a new set of audience rules that has changed how writers build comedy.
That dilemma hangs over Peacock’s upcoming Dig (premiering Nov. 23), which reunites Schur with Amy Poehler for the first time in more than a decade since he co-created Parks and Recreation.
The show also represents another, even longer-awaited reunion.
The comedy, about four women on an archaeological dig, excavating history as they confront their own choices, marks the first time that Schur has worked with J.J. Philbin since the duo met and fell in love while working as writers on NBC’s Saturday Night Live back in 1998.
Individually, Schur and Philbin have been involved in some of the most meaningful comedies of the past few decades: The Office, Parks and Rec, New Girl, The Good Place, Hacks and Only Murders in the Building. Philbin has drama background too, most notably on The O.C. Now, with their comedy-drama Dig, the couple — married with two teenage kids — are confronting a problem reshaping the genre they’ve spent their careers in: How do you make audiences fall in love with comedy characters when you may have only eight or 10 episodes to do it? (Dig’s season one is 10 episodes.)
In their first joint interview tied to Dig, based on Kate Myers’ 2023 novel Excavations, co-showrunners Schur, 50, and Philbin, 52, explain why streaming has put “hangout shows” like Friends and The Office on “life support” — and why comedies now increasingly need a narrative “engine,” whether a mystery, murder or crime, simply to keep viewers watching.
Their experience making Dig, which layers in a twisty adventure mystery plot with the laughs, reveals just how much the genre has changed.
But they warn of a catch: The very device that gets viewers to finish a season can make a show less rewatchable — and less likely to become part of what Philbin calls “the cultural fabric.”
Schur’s verdict on the shift is even harsher: “The new system broke that over its knee.”
Ouch.
In today’s Series Business, Schur and Philbin get into:
- How Amy Poehler’s Dig is built for television’s new rules
- Why women in their 50s are suddenly getting richer TV roles — and what Poehler saw in Dig’s four generations of women
- Schur’s early involvement in Widow’s Bay, and what creator Katie Dippold changed that was “the right choice”
- What Only Murders taught Philbin about the “engine” today’s comedies need
- How streaming has “retrained writers” and changed the way comedies are crafted
- Why smart audiences often tire of the trick that hooked them, and the bind for creators trying to keep a show going
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