The new sitcom that’s actually funny: Brooklyn Nine-Nine with SNL’s Andy Samberg

IT sounds like a terrible TV cliche — a US comedy set in a police station — but Brooklyn Nine-Nine cops plenty of laughs.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine - Season Pilot

GENUINELY funny sitcoms are a rare thing, so it’s surprising to find the best new American comedy, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, is airing on SBS.

From creators Mike Schur and Dan Goor (The Office, Parks and Recreation) the comedy, set in a Brooklyn police station, received great reviews in the US and won two Golden Globes; one for best comedy and the other for star Andy Samberg, who won best comedy actor for playing prankish detective Jake Peralta.

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Samberg added the gong to the Emmy award he shares with Justin Timberlake.

The comedian is unsure whether he’s more proud of winning an Emmy or of the fact he won it for song called D--- In A Box.

“Probably the latter!” he laughs. “Any award I win is hysterical for me.”

The former Saturday Night Live star leads an unusually strong ensemble including Andre Braugher as the wickedly deadpan police captain, football player turned actor Terry Crews as a musclebound, scaredy cat sergeant and stand-up comic Chelsea Peretti as a withering, odd secretary.

Samberg joined the show because it didn’t feel like just another tired rehash of something audiences were already familiar with.

“You just want it to feel new in a way, you don’t want it to feel like you’re doing a stock version of something that’s been done before and I don’t think we have — and that’s part of the joy of doing the show,” he says, placing the credit firmly at the feet of Schur and Goor.

“There’s not a tonne of people I would agree to do something with just because it’s them, but those guys are both on that list for me,” he says.

Samberg is billed as a producer on the show and unlike the standard vanity credit he really does consult with the EPs about scripts and has “a lot of input into shaping and reshaping scenes as we shoot, and pitching jokes for all the cast and then giving multiple rounds of editing notes”.

“So it’s fairly hands-on but not even close to as much work as an executive producer.”

The only bum note about Brooklyn Nine Nine’s success (season two kicks off in the US in late September) is that it caused Samberg to drop out of BBC comedy Cuckoo, which screened here on The Comedy Channel.

He put in a note-perfect performance as the unemployed, new age, slacker son-in-law who ruins the lives of his middle-class parents, played by Greg Davies and Helen Baxendale.

Realising they’d lost him to Brooklyn Nine Nine, the producers replaced him with Twilight star Taylor Lautner — of all people — for season two.

“He’s a lovely guy so I’m excited to see what they’ve done with it,” he says. “It very well may be [different] but I will say it will be the same writer and same director so it’ll still be smart and funny and have the same core cast.”

Shooting a big network sitcom is a very different experience to making small British comedies but Samberg says he prefers more intimate shoots.

He cut his teeth shooting funny videos with close friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone for The Lonely Island website (check it out, it’s still funny and still going), and has made shoestring indie features like Celeste and Jesse Forever.

“The difference really is the food (catering) and if you’re in a trailer or not and those things don’t really matter, in the end it’s just a camera and what performance you’re giving in front of it,” he says.

■ Brooklyn Nine Nine, SBS1, Monday, 10pm

Watch Andy Samberg and Taran Killam in a SNL skit with Gotye:

Originally published as The new sitcom that’s actually funny: Brooklyn Nine-Nine with SNL’s Andy Samberg