When Sam Richardson broke the news on social media in 2018 about the cancellation of “Detroiters,” he expressed thanks and hopes that this wasn’t the end.
“I want to thank everyone who watched and supported the show. It was a dream to make and I’m proud that those who did see it enjoyed it. Maybe it will find a home elsewhere, who knows? But truly, thank you,” he tweeted.
Six years later, optimism is growing again that the Comedy Central series set and shot in the Motor City may get a new lease on life.
On Monday, Netflix confirmed reports that “Detroiters” soon would be streaming on its platform. “This is an official Cramblin Duvet Advertising announcement. Detroiters Seasons 1 & 2 are coming to Netflix in the US on October 15!” it posted on X.
The reaction from the “Detroiters” fan nation was swift. “Biden has only a few short months left to fulfill his campaign promise of bringing Detroiters back for a third season,” quipped @MatteMeuse in a tweet.
The @WatchDetroiters account on X, which is not affiliated with the show, sent a loud and clear message , by tweeting “Season 3. ... Do it cowards” to the official Netflix comedy account on X, @NetflixIsAJoke.
To understand why a cult favorite that had only two seasons and 20 episodes is still fueling such loyalty, it’s useful to review the history of the authentically Detroit show. Set and shot here, "Detroiters" wove the city into its filmed and scripted content in ways that only someone who knows and loves the D can appreciate fully.
Created by hometown favorites Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson (along with “Saturday Night Live” alumni Zach Kanin and Joe Kelly), "Detroiters" aired its first season in 2017, followed by a second in 2018. Both seasons earned the sort of reviews that sitcom makers usually dream of. Variety called the show “a state of mind — a nice place to visit and stay awhile, to enjoy the world in a completely different headspace.” Ben Travers of IndieWire described it as containing “pure, ceaseless, bursts of joy.’
The series has an impressive 95% positive rating on the Rotten Tomatoes tomato-meter.
Thanks largely to Richardson, who grew up in Detroit, and Robinson, who hails from Clarkston, ”Detroiters” essentially was a love letter to the city laced with nods to local people, places, snack foods and trends. It reflected their lives and spoke to their friendship. They became close friends early in their careers while working at the now-defunct Second City Detroit and Planet Ant in Hamtramck
The show could be brilliant (and a little gross) in its humor, yet it always was heartfelt in its depiction of a friendship between its two lead characters, Sam Duvet and Tim Cramblin, who were trying to keep their small Detroit ad agency afloat. The stories were packed with absurd details such as the time Sam and Tim hit a Chrysler marketing executive (played by Jason Sudeikis, who was one of the executive producers) with a car and dragged him into the woods unconscious, then stuck a Better Made potato chip bag over his head.
The Detroit nods weren't perfunctory. They were hilarious. Seeing venerable former WDIV-TV (Channel 4) news anchor Mort Crim play himself going off-script while filming a furniture ad and challenging ISIS to a fight was pure comedy gold. Discovering actors from here like Shawntay Dalon , who played Tim's wife, Chrissie, and Andre Belue , the amiable Tommy Pencils, was a pleasure.
The initial ratings were respectable for a newbie single-camera sitcom on a niche cable network. According to Comedy Central, the first season of "Detroiters" averaged about 360,000 viewers per episode, and nearly 500,000 when delayed viewing was added. As then-Comedy Central president Kent Alterman said at the time of the decision to renew the show, "The ratings pretty much doubled in terms of playback, from live in comparison to the playback numbers, and that's always a good sign that it's resonating for people."
But encouraging numbers and widespread critical raves didn’t translate to an improved performance for the second season. The show’s average audience dropped to slightly more than 270,000 viewers, 354,000 including delayed viewing.
Once “Detroiters” was axed, admirers began asking for its rescue. NBC “Late Night” host Seth Meyers, who’d been a colleague of Robinson’s at “Saturday Night Live,” wrote a column for pop culture website Vulture praising the episode featuring a pooping car as “brilliantly stupid.”
““I am sad that, for now, ‘Detroiters’ will not have a third season. I am hopeful that a network looking for a new jewel to fill its schedule will rescue it,” he opined.
In 2022, drummer, author, filmmaker and ardent “Detroiters” fan Questlove of the Roots, the house band for NBC’s “Tonight Show,” tweeted, “I’m willing the return of Detroiters back on the air. With all the post Ted Lasso power @Jasonsudeikis has now — im telling you ... this is the comedy we deserve. #BringDetroitersBack.”
Meanwhile, Richardson and Robinson have been experiencing much success with other projects. Richardson, who played earnest politico Richard Splett on HBO’s “Veep,” also has starred in AppleTV+’s “The Afterparty.” In 2023, he won a guest acting Emmy for his portrayal of billionaire Edwin Akufo on “Ted Lasso." (which was co-created by Sudeikis and Kelly of "Detroiters" and starred Sudeikis).
Robinson premiered his sketch comedy series “I Think You Should Leave” (which has featured appearances by Richardson) on Netflix in 2019. So far, he has earned three Emmys for it, back-to-back statuettes in 2022 and 2023 for best actor in a short-form comedy or drama and one last year as executive producer of the outstanding short-form comedy, drama or variety series. This month, Robinson's "The Chair Company" (a comedy pilot he did with "Detroiters" and "I Think You Should Leave" co-creator Zach Kanin) was given a series order by HBO.
Instead of overshadowing "Detroiters," Richardson and Robinson's other work seems to have helped draw attention to it and encouraged continuing media coverage. In 2022, entertainment website Collider even advocated for a “Detroiters” movie that would “follow the logic of Tim and Sam’s dumb, endearing characters and work to boost their life outside the agency for more depth and nuance without evading the peculiarities that make them so lovable to fans.”
Episodes of "Detroiters" are available to stream on Paramount+ (Comedy Central removed most of its online archive in June) , but October's debut on Netflix will be a whole different ball game. A behemoth like Netflix is capable of taking the cult favorite and extending its reach to a worldwide audience.
Shows that have ended their runs like USA's "Suits," Fox's “Prison Break,” and Showtime's "Dexter" have been boosted by Netflix. Although they are no longer running new episodes, they are new to Netflix's Gen Z binge watchers (and viewers of all ages who just never got around to watching them). “Suits," which ran from 2011 to 2019, won a wave of fresh interest after landing on Netflix in 2023, becoming the most streamed show of the year and leading Nielsen’s streaming charts for a record-breaking 12 weeks.
Will “Detroiters” do that well? Or even well enough to be resurrected? It all depends. If “Detroiters” takes off like a meteor on Netflix, it could motivate the streaming platform or another company to finance a third season for the newfound audience. Such a project likely wouldn’t cost that much. After all, “Detroiters” didn’t rely on lavish sets or elaborate special effects for its kudos. Like Sam and Tim, it was a scrappy underdog that relied on silly-smart writing and an array of mostly already-existing Detroit locations.
In 2020, Richardson told the Guardian that “Detroiters” never got “the respect from the network that it deserved, or the chance that it was promised,” citing the fact that the second season aired in the middle of summer without the fanfare of big publicity.
“They were like: ‘We’re going to put this out in the summer when there’s no sports because we don’t want to compete with sports.’ I was like: ‘When is that ever? When is there no sports?’” griped Richardson, who, like Robinson, is a loyal fan of Detroit teams. The two have been spotted frequently at Tigers and Lions games.
In the meantime, if you’ve never seen “Detroiters,” please take the advice of Seth Meyers and other superfans and sample it on Netflix. As Meyers wrote six years ago for Vulture about season two's “Hark Motors” episode: “I would urge everyone to watch the cold open of this episode, which includes a full-throated defense of the superhero the Flash, a child slapping a grown man, a woman being told to hold onto a rope so she doesn’t slide around in the back of a van, and five other great jokes all in under two minutes. It was brilliantly stupid.”
Wouldn’t it be genius goofiness if somebody made season three?
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Netflix's 'Detroiters' deal fuels hopes for fresh episodes of Motor City-made sitcom
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