Parks & Recreation Season One

Parks & Recreation had a lot of expectations to live up to. First up, it was created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur – the folks behind the US version of The Office. The cast includes Amy Poehler (founding member of Upright Citizens Brigade and Tina Fey's foil on Saturday Night Live), Office alumnus Rashida Jones, and rising comedy star Aziz Ansari (one third of Human Giant – and if that's not comedy-nerd enough for you, note that one of the show's main writers is Norm Hiscock, writer for Canadian comedy legends the Kids in the Hall). So, all things considered, there's a lot of reasons to expect it to be knock-your-socks-off funny right out of the gate.

Alas, it starts off pretty slowly, with the entire first episode being spent setting up the show's premise: Poehler is Leslie Knope, deputy director of the Parks & Recreation department of the city of Pawnee, Indiana, who is determined to get the city to build a park over a massive, garbage-filled pit in the city after local nurse Ann Perkins (Jones) reports that her boyfriend fell into the pit one night and broke his legs. The show picks up steam as the ensemble cast settle into their roles, but it never quite crawls from beneath the shadow of The Office: it has the same mockumentary format, and Knope's blithe, guileless optimism echoes that of Steve Carrell's Michael Scott. While the main cast are strong, it's really only when secondary characters appear – like Pamela Reed as Leslie's career public servant mother Marlene Griggs-Knope – that the show develops its own rhythm. By all accounts the second series is where the show really hits its stride, so think of these six episodes as an appetiser before the main course.

Extras Commentary, deleted scenes, music videos, producer's cut episode.

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