Michael Shur planned for The Good Place season one to only have 13 episodes. Pictured: (l-r) Kristen Bell as Eleanor, Ted Danson as Michael. (Photo: Justin Lubin/NBC.)

Is The Good Place TV show on NBC cancelled? No. We are happy to report the first season — starring Kristen Bell and Ted Danson — returns on January 5th, at 8:30pm ET/PT. D’Arcy Carden, Jameela Jamil, Manny Jacinto, and William Jackson Harper also star.

The thing is, there are only four episodes left in The Good Place, season one. NBC did not cut the episode order, though. Creator Michael Schur tells TVLine he always intended the show to have a 13-episode first season.

“When I pitched the show to NBC, I felt pretty strongly it was kind of a big swing, and everything was gonna be really heavily serialized,” [Schur] tells TVLine. “It just felt like it made sense to keep that to a shorter season. And they very kindly and reasonably agreed with that.”

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“It isn’t a ‘you can do as many of these as you want’ kind of a show. It has to be tightly plotted. And it’s much harder to do that over 22 or 24 episodes, versus 13 or so.”

Plus, he says, the show’s cast was agreeable to a shortened season: “Kristen has been doing seasons that long for a while now [on Showtime’s House of Lies]. Ted [Danson] had been doing CSI, which obviously there are way more of. And doing that for a long time gets kind of exhausting. So everybody in every direction wanted the same thing.”

According to Schur, if NBC orders The Good Place, season two, it is likely to be about the same length.

The Good Place Season One Ratings  

The Good Place follows the self-centered, thoughtless Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell). Thanks to a mistake, after she dies, she ends up in The Good Place, although she arguably belongs in The Bad Place.

As of its most recent episode (November 3rd) the first season of The Good Place was averaging a 1.46 rating in the 19-49 year-old viewer demographic and drawing an average total audience of 5.147 million viewers.

While those numbers seem anemic for primetime on a broadcast network, NBC’s scripted fare has been struggling for a while. When we sort its shows by the demo numbers, The Good Place is in fourth place among The Peacock Network’s ten scripted series we’re tracking in 2016-17.

The Good Place is not in such a good place, regarding audience size. When sorted by average total viewers, The Good Place lands in the ninth position, above only the second season of NBC’s Superstore.

Will The Good Place Be Cancelled or Renewed for Season Two?

Whether NBC will cancel or renew The Good Place for a second season is too close to call, right now. The 18-49 year old viewer demographic numbers are the ones advertisers often care most about. The freshman sitcom is doing okay by that measure.

In addition to its demo numbers, there are other factors in the show’s favor. Typically, half-hour sitcoms are less expensive to produce than hour-long series. When sorted by demo numbers, The Good Place beats out Chicago PD, Chicago Med, Timeless, Blindspot, and The Blacklist.  Having shorter seasons also makes The Good Place a less expensive buy for the network.

What can you do to help ensure season two of The Good Place? Watch it. When you can, watch it when it airs (rather than on delay). When you can’t, try to watch it on the same day, or within three days of the broadcast. And don’t fast-forward through commercials! (Go get a snack, instead.)

Finally, recommend The Good Place to family and friends. (Also? Cross your fingers that it doesn’t end up in The Bad Place.)

What do you think? Do you watch The Good Place TV series? Do you think NBC should cancel or renew The Good Place for season two? Sound off, in the comments.