The Good Place: Season Four to End the NBC Comedy Series

(Colleen Hayes / NBC)

This is the bad place. Tonight at the Television Academy in North Hollywood, creator Michael Schur said The Good Place TV show would end with its upcoming fourth season. Schur sounded the death knell during a promotional panel for the show (for Emmy consideration). Season three of The Good Place completed its 13-episode run on January 24, 2019. The fourth and final season should premiere this fall (i.e. in the 2019-2020 television season). Schur and the creative team made the decision to end the comedy — and they have a final season to see it off, so although it is ending, let’s not call The Good Place cancelled..

An NBC sitcom, The Good Place stars Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, Manny Jacinto, and D’Arcy Carden. Kirby Howell-Baptiste recurs in season three. The series centers on Eleanor Shellstrop (Bell) who, after dying, believes she has mistakenly ended up in The Good Place — instead of The Bad Place — where she truly belongs. Along with fellow lost souls, indecisive philosopher Chidi Anagonye (Harper), shallow socialite Tahani Al-Jamil (Jamil), and blundering Blake Bortles super-fan, Jason Mendoza (Jacinto), Eleanor tries to find the good person within. In the third season, “Team Cockroach” was given a second shot a living a good life on earth, with ally and architect Michael (Danson) and not-a-robot Janet (Carden) trying to help them out.

Check out this NBC Media Alert on the decision to end The Good Place TV series with season four.

• Michael Schur, creator and executive producer of NBC and Universal Television’s “The Good Place,” made the following announcement Friday night at the Television Academy in North Hollywood during a panel discussion dedicated to the critically acclaimed comedy series.

• NBC’s “The Good Place” will conclude following its upcoming 2019-20 fourth season that begins in the fall.

• “After ‘The Good Place’ was picked up for season two, the writing staff and I began to map out, as best we could, the trajectory of the show. Given the ideas we wanted to explore, and the pace at which we wanted to present those ideas, I began to feel like four seasons – just over 50 episodes – was the right lifespan. At times over the past few years we’ve been tempted to go beyond four seasons, but mostly because making this show is a rare, creatively fulfilling joy, and at the end of the day, we don’t want to tread water just because the water is so warm and pleasant. As such, the upcoming fourth season will be our last.“I will be forever grateful to NBC and Universal TV for letting us make ‘The Good Place,’ and for letting us end it on our own schedule. I will also be forever grateful to the creative team, both on-screen and off, for their hard work and dedication to a very weird idea. We ask the question very frequently, on this show, what do we owe to each other? The answer, for me, is: I owe all of you a whole lot.

  “We look forward to a great final season airing this fall.”

• “Since day one, ‘The Good Place’ has been a seminal show for us and one that hits all the NBC touch points – incredibly smart, funny, inventive and emotional,” said Lisa Katz and Tracey Pakosta, Co-Presidents of Scripted Programming, NBC Entertainment. “We know the audience will love what Mike Schur and his writers have in store for the final season.”
• For the 2018-19 season, “The Good Place” averaged a 1.6 rating in adults 18-49 and 4.6 million viewers overall in “live plus seven day Nielsens,” and more than doubled to a 3.3 rating in 18-49 after 35 days of linear and projected non-linear viewership.
• Counting digital viewership only, “The Good Place” was up season to season by 38% in 18-49.
• “The Good Place” delivered the season’s #1 most educated audience among all primetime Big 4 programs, indexing at a 156 in adults 18-49 with four or more years of college (with 100 representing an average concentration of those viewers).
• Since its launch in 2016, “The Good Place” has won the AFI Award for Program of the Year, TCA Award for Program of the Year, a Humanitas Award and a Peabody Award. In addition, the series has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award, Writers Guild Award, Producers Guild Award and Critics’ Choice Award.

• Critics have raved about the first three seasons of “The Good Place.” The New York Times Magazine says it’s “the best sitcom on TV,” TVLine calls it the “#1 comedy on television” and Vanity Fair adds, “‘The Good Place’ remains the brightest beacon of light currently on television.”

• Ted Danson has won a Critics’ Choice Award and was nominated for an Emmy Award.

• “The Good Place” stars Ted Danson, Kristen Bell, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, Manny Jacinto and D’Arcy Carden.

• Michael Schur, David Miner, Morgan Sackett and Drew Goddard executive produce.

• “The Good Place” is produced by Universal Television, Fremulon and 3 Arts Entertainment.

(NBC)

What do you think? Are you a fan of The Good Place TV series? Is season four the right time to end this NBC TV show? If it were up to you, would The Good Place be cancelled or renewed for season five?