Public Service

Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones hopped on set to start filming their new sitcom last week, and it looks like it was just in time! The first ad for the new show, now called Parks and Recreation, aired during the special post-Super Bowl episode of The Office last night.

The short promo shows Poehler as Leslie Knope, a parks committee member from Pawnee, Indiana, wandering around an abandoned pit and picking up trash while talking about her vow to turn it into a lovely park. Things get a little dicey, however, when she finds a particularly unappetizing specimen.

I have to say, I'm not in love with the name Parks and Recreation — can you really hear anyone saying, "Nah, I gotta stay in tonight and watch the new Parks and Recreation"? I might have preferred the previous rumored title — Public Service — but as NBC's Ben Silverman told the New York Times, they didn't "want to seem mean" about making fun of public service. Eh, OK. To check out the promo, just read more

The non-spinoff spinoff of The Office finally has itself a possible title — Public Service — and a very funny pilot script that I got a chance to read back at the TCA press tour. It also has an up-and-coming costar in Aziz Ansari, who's been popping up everywhere from Flight of the Conchords to Scrubs to his MTV sketch show, Human Giant. He was the first person to join the series before writers Greg Daniels and Michael Schur even had a concept locked down, and at TCA, we chatted about the leap of faith it took him to join and about his character, a local government networker named Tom. Read on for highlights:

You were a part of the show really early. How did you first get involved?
When I got on board it was before they really had a concept or anything nailed down, and it was really like, "Do you want to do a show with Mike and Greg, a documentary-type show?" And I was like, "Yeah, that would be my dream job."

Were you a fan of The Office?
The Office is probably my favorite comedy on TV, and as soon as I heard they were doing another show, I was like, "Oh my God, I'd love to be a part of that." I met with them pretty early on and I told them that, flat-out . . . A month or so later, they're like, "Yeah, we want you to do it with us." They still didn't have anything as far as their concept, but I was super excited. Then after a few months I found out Amy was doing it, and then I was like, "Oh, that's great — it'll be awesome."

Since you were involved so early, did you get to be involved in creating your character?
They kind of wrote it toward my strengths and attitudes that they'd seen me play. Since they knew they were writing it for me, I know that helped a ton.

What is it that you like about the mockumentary style?
It's just a fun format to do comedy in. The interviews and stuff like that — it's a great format for improvising. Even in Human Giant, we would do sketches or profile pieces that were kind of like little mockumentaries, and it was just a really fun format for performers and people who like to improvise especially.

To find out the future for Ansari on Scrubs and Human Giant, just read more

• NBC's Amy Poehler comedy has a likely title: Public Service. — New York Times
• Anchor Bay has bought the rights to the comedy starring Ashton Kutcher, Spread, which just premiered at Sundance. — Variety
• The next Real World season will be set in Cancun. — The Hollywood Reporter
• It looks like the next Batman movie, a sequel to The Dark Knight, will hit theaters in 2011. — ComingSoon
• Radiohead, Kanye West, and Paul McCartney have joined the lineup of performers for this year's Grammy Awards. — Billboard
• A 3-D porn movie is in the works in Hong Kong. — Variety
• Fox has ordered a pilot for the US remake of Absolutely Fabulous. — Zap2it

Source