Sunset P.I. is basically the Brooklyn Nine-Nine guys making a show just so they could work with Keith David.
The pitch, near as I can tell from the panel, goes something like this: take the workplace comedy machinery of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, throw in a loose Moonlighting flirtation, set the whole thing in L.A. noir, and build it around Jake Johnson playing a private investigator who is, and I cannot stress this enough, a significant professional upgrade from the last fake P.I. he played on television.
The new NBC comedy stars Jake Johnson, Jane Levy, Langston Kerman, Mary Shalaby, and Keith David, with creators Dan Goor and Luke Del Tredici steering the whole chaotic detective agency.
Somebody opened by asking Goor and Del Tredici straight up if they were chasing Moonlighting. The answer was a shrug into a yes.
“It’s loosely inspired by. We really like the sort of chemistry between them, and the dating, and that. But you know, it’s also a hard comedy, and it’s an ensemble workplace in the way that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is and Parks and Rec.”
Their actual goal, as they put it, was less one specific influence and more all of them at once.
“We’re trying to make a mash-up of all the great network television shows we love.”
That is a pretty clean mission statement. Not a straight noir parody. Not a detective spoof. Not just Jake Johnson doing Julius Pepperwood for real this time. Sunset P.I. sounds more like NBC trying to bring back the kind of hangout comedy that still has a weekly engine under the hood.
The case-of-the-week format is a feature, not a limitation
The most interesting thing said all day had nothing to do with jokes. It was about structure. PI shows, cop shows, doctor shows, one of them said, survive for a reason, and it’s not nostalgia. It’s that the built-in plot machinery does a lot of the heavy lifting so the character work doesn’t have to be forced. “There’s so much plot that’s built into the storytelling, which allows you to use that as a framework and tell character stories inside of it without having to really push the character stories. It makes for a world where you can have really rich, interesting episodes without pushing the characters continually further and further. So after a hundred episodes, they’re still hopefully not acting wild. They’re still recognizable people.”
The other cited The Pitt as a template worth stealing from, less for tone than for how it threads the needle between prestige and procedural. “We were really inspired by The Pitt, which feels like both a really effective streaming show and a really effective network show. With a PI show, you can have overriding plot elements and also do case-of-the-week things and workplace comedy. We’re hoping to get the best of both worlds. It is very much a network show, but we’re conscious that a large percentage of the audience will stream it, and we want it to work as a streaming show too.”
They cast Keith David because they wanted to work with Keith David
Somebody asked how they landed the ensemble, and the answer for at least one cast member was refreshingly simple. “We wanted somebody who can be old enough to be maybe not that tech savvy, but on the other hand, unbelievably cool. And then you got Keith David. We want to work with Keith David. This is obviously who he is.” That set off a bit that ran the rest of the panel, with reporter after reporter commenting on how cool Keith David is in the room, to the point where Jake Johnson eventually had to fight for scraps. “Everyone’s saying how cool Keith is, but if you could also just say how cool Jake is.” He got his line eventually. “Jake, you are cool.” His response: “Thanks so much. No problem.” Devastating restraint.
The show leans hard into its city. “We were in LA, and to be able to just shoot LA and not have to hide it, everywhere we go, we are not pretending it’s something else. We really wanted to be an LA show, both as a tribute to the city and as an homage to all the great noir from the 40s and 50s through the 70s.” The cold open was shot on location in a house up in the hills, which they promised is the kind of thing viewers will see a lot more of.
Yes, everyone is going to think of Julius Pepperwood
If you know Jake Johnson from New Girl, you already know Nick Miller had a whole fictional PI alter ego named Julius Pepperwood, so somebody was always going to ask. Johnson took it in stride. “I didn’t think about Julius Pepperwood a lot in this. But I do think what I’ve learned from the New Girl fanbase is that they are kind of loyal and awesome, and what I loved about this script is it felt so different and so unique.” He’s hoping some of the New Girl cast might show up eventually and connect the two shows’ universes. As for the comparison itself, he wasn’t shy. “Julius Pepperwood was a ridiculous PI. So there might be a little bit of taste, but I think Mickey is a much better PI.”
The father-son bit isn’t just a bit
There’s a running gag where Langston plays the father of Johnson’s character, and a reporter asked whether that relationship is going to warm up over the course of the series or stay a source of comedy. Johnson’s answer suggested it’s both. “I think I’m going to really have to earn it from him. He’s been making it tough. I imagine that’s going to be a beautiful ebb and flow throughout the series. I love stories about fathers and sons, because it’s never just what it looks like. There’s always something underneath that’s fueling whatever it is you’re seeing. And then one of these days you get the big reveal about why it is the way it is.”
Johnson’s sitting this one out as a director, on purpose
Johnson’s also a producer on the show, and given that he wrote and directed his own film, Self Reliance, a reporter asked if it was hard handing creative control to someone else. He said it was the opposite, and that it’s become a pattern for him. “What I started looking for is people I was big fans of, and jumping onto their show. I’ve been a big fan of Dan and Luke for a very long time, so I’m very happy that they’re running the writers room. I’m excited to act in it. As a producer, I was part of the casting, so we’d have a lot of those discussions. But I’m excited to not direct, and get great directors, and be creatively on their show instead of mine. It’s funny, I’ve gone in the opposite direction than I thought I was going, but I’ve been really loving it.”
What everybody took from their own personality
The last question went around the whole cast: what’s one real trait you gave your character. Keith David copped to leaning into a love of being annoying. “There’s a few scenes, especially in the pilot, where my character is being pretty obnoxious, in a way that’s fun. My wife doesn’t love it, but that’s not her business.” Cast member Mary said her character Raya inherited her habit of saying whatever comes to mind with zero filter. “I do that a lot in real life, to where people have to warn other people before they meet me. I guess I get to lean into my inner combustion, which I think is funny. My wife does not.”
Langston, asked in a separate virtual question to rate himself 1 to 10 as a real private investigator, went refreshingly low. “I’m not particularly good at being tricky or dishonest. I’m mostly pretty straightforward, to my detriment. So yeah, I’d be bad. I wouldn’t solve any cases.” He settled on a two. Johnson, naturally, rated himself the opposite direction. “I do think I could solve a lot of crimes, and I think I’m bringing that to Mickey.” Somebody reminded him this is a fictional program. He did not seem to fully accept that.
The panel wrapped with what sounded like the actual theme song playing the room out, something breezy about a city miles away and a promise that you’ll see it, swear it’s true. Which, fine, works as a mission statement for the whole show: a bunch of very funny people who clearly like each other, making a case that the oldest format on network TV still has plenty of gas left in the tank.
WHEN TO WATCH
“Sunset P.I.” premieres February 2027 on NBC.