How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

Michael Schur is a TV writer and producer who specializes in ensemble comedies. After starting his career as a writer for the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, Schur joined the writing staff of the American adaptation of British workplace sitcom The Office, which went on to become highly successful. Alongside The Office showrunner Greg Daniels, Schur went on to create Parks and Recreation, a sitcom following the antics of government employees in rural Indiana, which was also a popular and critical success. Together with Dan Goor, Schur also created Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a sitcom following detectives who work for the New York City Police Department. In addition to their workplace settings and ensemble casts, Schur’s comedies generally feature an optimistic tone, long-lasting romantic couplings, and occasional light social commentary. Readers familiar with Schur’s TV work will find many of the same stylistic hallmarks in How to Be Perfect—particularly his witty and seemingly irrepressible sense of humor.

Thematically, it is Schur’s work as the creator of the 2016 sitcom The Good Place that is most relevant to How to Be Perfect; indeed, Schur is billed as “creator of The Good Place.” Set in an afterlife where people are rewarded and punished according to their mortal life choices, the show follows a cohort of recently deceased individuals as they come to terms with their new reality.