Everyone loves a hometown hero. That person who rises to the occasion to kick the winning field goal, take home top honors, or — as with Detroiters‘ Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson — tell the best jokes. Both the Veep regular and the former Saturday Night Live player hail from the great Michigan city that serves as the driving force behind their new Comedy Central series. And with the help of executive producers Lorne Michaels and Jason Sudeikis, these hometown heroes are trying to transform the city of Detroit into a comedic character all its own.
An alum of Chicago’s Second City improvisational comedy theater, Richardson plays Sam Duvet — an ad man whose head is often lost in the clouds above Detroit. Meanwhile, fellow Second City alum turned television writer, Robinson, plays Duvet’s best friend Tim Cramblin, who inherits his father’s ad business and invites his pal along for the ride. As real life best friends and real life Detroiters, Sam and Tim bring an organic comedic authenticity to this new show.
Detroiters demonstrates what can happen when a group of people are left to their own devices. In this case, the “group” consists of ad men Sam and Tim, and the “devices” are whatever schemes they concoct and subsequently attempt to enact. As the first episode reveals, per the duo’s interactions with Sudeikis’ character, big wig Carter Grant, this doesn’t always go according to plan. But no matter how bad things get, the two lifelong best friends always manage to stick together — even if that means taking an out-of-date form of speed while trying to shatter a seemingly unbreakable office window.
However, Detroiters isn’t just a comedy series about some characters who happen to live in Detroit. It’s a show about Detroit, a city whose inhabitants happen to include an elderly-but-rambunctious secretary, a bartender who offers her patrons “hot or cold” beers, and Eddie “The Hot Tub King of Detroit” Champagne. Richardson, Robinson and the writers infused these people with as much of Detroit as they could. They also filmed a good chunk of the series on location. This is why, as Sam and Tim’s passion for sending the garbage trucks out into the city reveals, Detroit is as much a main character as they are.
Detroiters premieres February 7th. Catch new episodes Tuesdays at 10:30/9:30c on Comedy Central or anytime on the CC App.
