SS > SF > TV > The Good Place

season 1. 2016
season 2. 2017
season 3. 2018
season 4. 2019

Everything is fine

We’d heard good things about this, and it came up on E4, so we thought we’d give it a try. We were rapidly hooked.

Eleanor Shellstrop wakes to find herself dead, and in The Good Place. The boss, Michael, explains that she is one of only a very few who gets to be there, because of all her marvellous humanitarian works during her lifetime. The problem is, she’s actually a selfish unpleasant person, who has been mixed up with a different Eleanor Shellstrop, and isn’t supposed to be there at all. How to ensure she isn’t found out, and sent to The Bad Place? Well, her soulmate just happens to be a moral philosophy professor...

Every episode is interesting, funny, and ends with a twist we never saw coming. There are real ethical dilemmas, real philosophy lectures, people who aren’t nice but you care about, utterly absurd situations, and it’s all just beautifully performed. And the massive twist at the end of season one – well, how are they going to handle season 2?

Witty, funny, clever, and unexpected. E4 don’t seem to be showing season 2, so we went off and got the DVD.

reviewed 3 February 2019

How long can they keep this up?

After the massive twist at the end of season 1, how would season 2 cope?

Extremely well, it turns out. In fact, since one of the major moral dilemmas of the first season has been resolved – the other Eleanor Shellstrop is not being tortured in the Bad Place – it makes the whole thing less problematic. There aren’t quite as many mini-cliffhangers at the end of the episodes, but there are still enough surprises, wit, philosophy, danger, and cleverness to keep this eminently watchable. 13 short episodes is not enough!

reviewed 29 April 2019

What on Earth?

So, the gang is back on Earth, to prove they can be good people. How will that work out?

The parts on Earth are great, but maybe lack the total surreality of the previous seasons. However, things rapidly pick up, and by the end of the season, chaos is back in full swing. Things are getting a little darker, probably as we come to care for the characters more, and as the characters themselves get less self-absorbed, and more working as a team. But it is still witty, thought-provoking, clever, and overall just brilliant.

reviewed 14 March 2020

The End of the Forkin’ Road!

The gang is back, having to prove to the Judge that the points system is fundamentally flawed. This does make the start of the season a little slow, as we get new characters who are being put in situations to make themselves better. But once that has happened, there’s a completely unexpected dire consequence that the gang then has to fix. Then they get to the real Good Place, and there’s another completely unexpected dire consequence they have to fix.

And they realise, all good things must come to an end. The show itself reflects this realisation brilliantly in its finale. To make the real Good Place feel like somewhere you would actually want to spend many many Jeremy Bearimys, and that it would fulfill you, is an exceptionally brilliant move. And then, to make that end in an equally fulling way is even more amazing.

Brilliant, funny, moving, thought-provoking, and … I may have said this before … brilliant.

reviewed 1 April 2021

The Good Place

2016 / TV

2017 / DVD

2018 / DVD

2019 / DVD