Leave it to a guy from West Hartford to make standing in line at the DMV or trying to get a pothole fixed funny.
Michael Schur, 33, a William H. Hall High School grad, is a co-creator of the new NBC sitcom "Parks & Recreation."
"I don't think that the show is about politics as much as it is about government," Schur told an audience of TV critics in Los Angeles earlier this year. "It's like we're not grinding any kind of ax or anything. It's really about a small project on a very local level.
If you own a television, Schur has probably made you laugh before. He was one of the first staff writers of "The Office" and has worked on "Saturday Night Live."
In the new show, premiering Thursday at 8:30 p.m., documentary cameras follow Leslie Knope, played by "SNL" alum Amy Poehler, a mid-level bureaucrat in the Parks and Rec Department of the fictional town of Pawnee, Ind.
Schur's TV comedy career started at West Hartford Community TV, where he made comic shorts, according to the Hartford Courant.
That experience placed him near the world of politics, as WHC TV is headquartered at West Hartford Town Hall, but he insists that wasn't the inspiration for his new show.
"I never paid any attention to local government growing up. You know it exists, but nobody thinks about it," the told the Courant.
