'Brickleberry' creators to launch new Netflix series, 'Paradise P.D.'

Two former Athens residents are launching a new Netflix comedy series.

“Paradise P.D.,” an animated comedy from Waco O’Guin and Roger Black, premiers Friday on the streaming service.

O’Guin and Black previously produced “Brickleberry” with noted comedian Daniel Tosh from 2012 to 2015, which aired on Comedy Central.

The new show centers around a small-town police department “so broke they can’t afford bullets.”

O’Guin has two brothers-in-law who are police officers, which both O’Guin and Black said served as a partial inspiration for the series. O’Guin’s brothers-in-law thought the idea was hilarious.

This isn’t the first time the two have based a show off family. O’Guin’s father-in-law was a former park ranger, and “Brickleberry” was centered around a group of park rangers. The main character of the show, Woody, was even named after O’Guin’s father-in-law.

O’Guin said part the inspiration for the show came from ride-alongs he took with his brothers-in-law. O’Guin’s fun times on ride-alongs, plus Burbank, California’s police staff shortage, provided a firm vision for “Paradise P.D.”

“In this town, all the glory of being a police officer is kind of gone,” O’Guin said. “The chief just has to put up with whoever he can get. So he’s basically landed the worst cops in the country. They’re not cut out for police work, way too violent or way too nice to do anything productive.

“In this town, it’s just not a cool job.”

With the show strictly shown on Netflix, O’Guin and Black had much more leeway – no bleeps, no blurs – when creating the show, which provided its own peculiar challenges.

“We know we can do anything we want now,” Black said. “But sometimes we’re just like, ‘Do we really want to do this?’ And sometimes we just have to please ourselves, and just because we can do it, doesn’t necessarily mean we have to do it or want to do it.”

Streaming the show via Netflix also provides the duo with much more leeway in the show’s run time. During “Brickleberry’s” run on Comedy Central, the shows had to run 21 minutes and 10 seconds “to the frame,” which resulted in lots of content being cut.

“With Netflix, it can be anywhere,” O’Guin said. “There’s no restriction on run time. … It can be 20 minutes, it can be 30 minutes. They don’t really care as long as we average around 25 minutes.”

All 10 episodes of the show’s first season will be available to stream Friday.—