Amy Poehler Show Details Including Premiere Date, As a Great (Grateful?) Performers Soon to Be Released From Kath & Kim Gig

(Bad News First)

... and in homes across America, the friends and relatives of the cast of the show including what I am sure are lovely people from the Shannon, Blair and Higgins families are actually celebrating the loss of their famous friend's/relative's job.

Okay, I'll throw you in, too, Mikey Day, I think you would have benefitted, as the others, from better stories, funnier jokes and anything that looked like direction.

(See the picture above? It's like Higgins is already looking around at the premiere party to see if anyone can hoist him off this turkey.)

Not much talk about this mentioned in today's press, but a couple of news outlets in Australia where news of the show being remade for America was big stuff originally have reported that NBC has cut their order as the beginning of the end.

C 21Media:

The Reveille/Universal Media Studios (UMS)-produced satire has had a shaky season at NBC. It debuted to a respectable 7.5 million viewers before hitting a steady decline through episode four, but then picked up sufficiently for NBC to award it a back-nine order in early November.

That confidence seems to have faded, however, and the net has now scaled back its 22-episode order to just 17. Its most recent broadcast hit a series ratings low of 1.7.

Kath and Kim's Thursday 20.30 will be taken over on April 9 by a new as-yet untitled mockumentary produced by the team behind NBC's remake of The Office, Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, and starring Saturday Night Live comedienne Amy Poehler as a mid-level bureaucrat in the parks and recreation department of Pawnee, Indiana. Daniels and Schur will executive-produce via their Deedle-Dee Productions vehicle in association with UMS.

Five fewer episodes, and and April debut for Amy Poehler's new NBC sitcom from Greg Daniels and Michael Schur.

(This is the good news portion. Yea!)

TV.com has a lot of details for you on Amy's show, where she will play a Leslie Knope (as in nope), middle management bureaucrat in the Pawnee, Indiana Department of Parks and Recreation. I am waiting for some creative person to come up with a logo and sell a t-shirt on Cafe Press.

They say:

Human Giant's Aziz Ansari will play a rival government official, Rashida Jones (formerly of The Office) will play a local nurse, and Upright Citizens Brigade vet Aubrey Plaza will play Leslie's intern. Leslie will team up with Jones' character to try and lobby for a construction pit to be turned into a city park.

More after the jump.

Rob Owen at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette got the script at the Television Critics Association NBC event and has more:

In the show, Leslie attempts to improve her town and advance her career by helping a local nurse (Rashida Jones, "The Office") turn a construction pit into a park. They're opposed by defensive bureaucrats, NIMBY neighbors and developers. She's helped and hindered by Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari, "Human Giant," "Scrubs"), another government official.

In the process, Leslie hopes to inspire her bored college intern (Aubrey Plaza) and reach her goal of becoming the first female President of the United States.

All you have to do is hang on until April. A great way to hang on and not get depressed by the sorry sorry state of the situation comedy?

Stop watching Kath & Kim for one. That will help immediately.

Pull out your Friends DVDs and watch seasons four and five, or go to the torrents and watch Adam Chase's wonderful Clone with Jonathan Pryce or No Heroics from ITV until better shows come along.

And ABC has a couple of shows that you should be DVRing despite their inappropriate lead-ins, Samantha Who? and Scrubs, now in what I'm pretty sure from the buzz around town will indeed be the final season.

If you keep watching crap, they (you know, Ben and Jeff and people like them) will continue to make crap.

Stop watching crap.