20th Television
The studio engine behind four seasons of afterlife mayhem on NBC.
20th Television is the American television production company that served as the primary production partner for The Good Place. Operating as a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company following the 2019 acquisition of 21st Century Fox, the company (formerly known as 20th Century Fox Television) has a long history of developing and producing scripted series for major broadcast and cable networks. For The Good Place, 20th Television provided the production infrastructure, studio facilities, and industry connections that allowed Michael Schur's team to bring his whimsical afterlife comedy to NBC audiences.
Working alongside Schur's own production banner, Deedle-Dee Productions, 20th Television handled the logistical and business side of making the show: securing studio stages, managing post-production, and navigating the network relationship with NBC. The partnership gave the creative team the breathing room to experiment across four seasons, from the tight ensemble comedy of Season 1 to the increasingly ambitious narrative structures of later seasons.
Quick Facts
- Type
- Television production company
- Parent company
- The Walt Disney Company (via Fox acquisition, 2019)
- Former name
- 20th Century Fox Television
- The good place network
- NBC
- The good place creator
- Michael Schur
- The good place seasons
- 4 (2016–2020)
- Co-production partner
- Deedle-Dee Productions
Lore & Background
In the ecosystem of American television, 20th Television occupies the role of the big-studio producer: the entity that turns a writer's pitch into a funded, scheduled, multi-season reality. For The Good Place, that meant providing the studio stages in the Los Angeles area where the elaborate afterlife sets were built, the post-production pipeline for the show's frequent reality-shifts and visual gags, and the business-and-legal scaffolding that kept a four-season run on track while the creative team chased increasingly wild ideas.
The company's lineage back to 20th Century Fox Television meant it brought decades of experience producing hit comedies and dramas, a track record that gave NBC confidence in the project from the pilot stage. Michael Schur, already beloved for Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, was a natural fit for the studio's brand of smart, character-driven comedy. The Good Place became one of the marquee titles in 20th Television's slate during its run, and the show's critical success—multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations—reflected well on the production partnership as a whole.
After the Disney-Fox merger reshaped the industry landscape, 20th Television continued operating under its new name, carrying forward the production legacy that included The Good Place among its catalog of acclaimed series. For fans, the company's name on the credits is a small but meaningful thread connecting the show to the broader machine of television production that made it possible.
Reader's Guide
If you've ever wondered how a show that constantly shifts its own reality actually gets made on a fixed studio stage, 20th Television's production infrastructure is part of the answer. The company provided the physical stages and backlot space where the Good Place's sets were constructed and, crucially, rebuilt. Michael Schur and his design team have spoken in interviews about the challenge of making the afterlife feel both mundane and magical—warm color palettes, slightly-too-perfect furniture, and a sense of 'this is a real place someone would live' even though it's a fantasy. The production team had to modularity-build sets so they could be reconfigured between the Good Place, the Bad Place, and the various 'reality' iterations without blowing the schedule.
Schur has described the writing room as a collaborative, almost workshop-like environment, with the core team breaking stories together before anyone wrote a draft. The ensemble cast—Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, Jameela Jamil, Manny Jacinto, and William Jackson Harper—were brought in early and given creative input, which the production structure at 20th Television supported by keeping the cast on set for extended blocks rather than the typical two-week shoot cycles.
One of the most talked-about behind-the-scenes details is how the show's frequent 'reality shifts' required the production team to track continuity across multiple versions of the same set. Props departments maintained parallel inventories, and the post-production team at 20th Television's facilities handled the visual effects that made the shifts seamless. The result was a show that felt effortless on screen but was, in production, a logistical ballet.
More in Behind the Scenes & Production
Elsewhere in The Good Place
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