蜜芽传媒

The Good Place is not your average sitcom – it's set in the afterlife with a plot which revolves around the application of moral philosophy.

The NBC show (available internationally on Netflix) is not a dense watch, though. With a healthy sprinkling of fart jokes and pop culture references, cast member Marc Evan Jackson calls it "the smartest, dumbest show on TV".

By necessity, setting a show in the afterlife meant a different look to the workplace sitcoms – The American Office, Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine – on which creator Michael Schur made his name.

But in this ever-competitive age of TV, a distinct visual identity massively helps your show to stand out from the competition.

Schur credits the otherworldly aesthetic of The Good Place to the work of the art department, led by production designer Dan Bishop.

Bishop, who was tasked with creating a heaven in the style of Disneyland and The Grove, an outdoor shopping centre in Los Angeles.

During their pre-production research into the visual identity of these places, Schur learned some surprising things about why these places look the way they do.

He said: ", very subtly pink light bulbs, because they found in psychological research that pink light makes people feel the happiest".

The shops in Eleanor's heaven – known as a neighbourhood – all have pun names and use the . They were recreated on a section of the called Little Europe, where films like Pirates of the Caribbean and Princess Diaries 2 were shot.

But the production team work their magic far beyond the confines of the studio's own real estate.

In particular, the show makes clever use of the lavish grounds of the in San Marino, California.

Set designer Camille Bratkowski that the location was a unanimous choice with her colleagues because it offered so many choices among its 207 acres.

While Eleanor and Tahani's homes appear to be in the grounds of the Huntington, no building work had to take place on the site. Bratkowski said: "We took an area of the gardens as a plate [a background shot] and then our great effects department dropped in one little house and one really huge house."

They also made use of the enormous Chinese-style gardens at the Huntington.

She added: "It's where we get to watch Tahani and Eleanor bond. One of the reasons it's good to go there is because we get this sense of grandeur and scope of what we know is a beautiful place. What better place to call The Good Place? It really does look like heaven."

Places outside of the Good Place are also markedly different in appearance. Set designer Kim Wannop described the aesthetic of the Bad Place on The Good Place podcast.

She said: "Steampunk and art deco, we like that look. It's great to see things going back to being analogue and hi-tech. Button machines and fuses and tapes."

It's a challenge for a set designer to source all the right material. She added: "We use prop houses, like History For Hire, for those adding machines or old ledger books. But it probably takes four or five prop houses to get the amount that we need for that office."

Costume designer Kirston Mann found working on The Good Place a very different experience to other Schur shows.

She said: " in the rules of the place. In Brooklyn Nine-Nine there aren’t rules but there are strong rules in The Good Place and the costumes get to be a part of that game."

she explained how her childhood influenced the distinctive look of Janet, the omniscient assistant played by D'arcy Carden.

She said: "When I read the first script, I had Janet in my head. When I was younger, I used to fly alone. And the stewardesses, back in those days, they were like goddess creatures to me. They helped me. I really saw Janet like that and Mike [Schur] is so generous to all departments and letting them be creative. And he was in, he was game."

American politics had a subtle impact too. Mann said: "I love the colour purple because somehow it means unity to me, especially during election times, with red and blue states. So it's just a little more harmonious; Janet's not taking any sides, she's just purely giving out information."

When we see characters outside of the Good Place they have a distinct look. Mann said: "With Mindy St. Claire, because she died in the 80s.

"She was a Wall Street woman—suits were mauve and sea foam. We want to attach her to the period and the style

"All the people in the Good Place died on the same day, but Mindy is unique because she’s in a different world.

"She’s sort of a one-of-a-kind in the In-Between Place and frozen in her fashion. And it would make you believe if you visited the Good Place in 50 years these people would be frozen in the fashion of the period that they died in."

D'Arcy Carden, who plays Janet, says the script originally didn't distinguish significantly between the two versions of her character.

She said: "It said something like, . She’s wearing a leather jacket'. So I sent Kirston [Mann] a photo of and was like, 'This is it'."