Great News is leaving Netflix in three weeks, watch it while you can

You can always tell a Tina Fey production.

They’re visually sunny, a little bit absurd and have the familiar strains of her composer husband Jeff Richmond’s boppy score.

She also has a stable of writers she likes to work with and one of them is Tracey Wigfield, who started as a writers’ assistant on 30 Rock before going on to co-write its finale with Fey, and together they won an Emmy for writing.

Wigfield is also the creator of Great News, a two-season workplace sitcom that was under-watched and under-appreciated. It was cancelled far too soon.

This may be your last chance to devour it – at least for a while. Great News is leaving Netflix on September 27. So, between now and that dark day, you have 24 days to binge its 23 episodes. Easy! That’s only one a day, or you could polish it off in one weekend.

The series ran on American TV from 2017 to 2018 and has been on Netflix for almost as long. It was produced by Fey and her company.

It’s set in the newsroom of a regional TV station in New Jersey and has some of the same dramas faced by glitzier counterparts such as The Newsroom or Morning Wars, but you don’t hate any of the characters quite as much. Or, at all, even.

The lead is Katie (Briga Heelan), an ambitious producer of The Breakdown, which is hosted by Chuck (John Michael Higgins), an older anchor forever moaning about change in the world, and Portia (Nicole Richie), a younger presenter who’s more plugged into social media and the glam set.

The executive producer is Greg (Adam Campbell, who you may remember as the Richie-rich daddy’s boy from Kimmy Schmidt), an Englishman who has been plagued by persistent rumours he is completely smooth “down there”.

But the piece de resistance has to be Carol (Broadway legend Andrea Martin), Katie’s mum who decides on a late-in-life change of purpose and joins The Breakdown as its intern. Carol has no boundaries, really putting the oomph in the stereotype of a nosy and meddling mother.

On another show, Carol could be the most annoying character but she is painted here with so much generosity. Carol approaches everything with the best intentions and even though she wreaks havoc, she is often proven right. Carol is incredibly extra but she is big-hearted and committed. As in Martin, who leaves nothing on the table, throwing herself in completely.

Wigfield has previously said that she based the dynamic between Katie and Carol on her relationship with her own mum.

Great News has a wonderful ensemble whose energies bounce off each other, and elevate the collective comedy. Take, for example, Chuck. He is crotchety, inappropriate (but not in a sexual harassment way) and resistant to any change.

But he’s still not an object of ridicule – not usually, anyway – because Higgins delivers his lines with so much churlish relish.

Higgins is one of those familiar faces that makes you go, “Oh! Him!”, because he’s had a role in everything from Evan Almighty, Pitch Perfect and Licorice Pizza to memorable roles in Arrested Development (he’s the very professional attorney Wayne Jarvis) and as the new principal in the revived Saved by the Bell (Wigfield was also the showrunner on that).

Higgins steals every scene he’s in because he’s not going for subtlety but he always knows where the line is.

If you think of Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock as a conservative who seemingly mocks poor people and says things such as, “Oh, hugging, so ethnic”, the reason you love him is because he actually treats everyone around with compassion and decency. That’s how you ground ridiculous characters and make them people.

Great News knew how to balance the hijinks with its characters’ humanity. Even though the hijinks were the point.

It belongs in that pantheon of great creative output from Fey’s production company which, in addition to 30 Rock, also includes Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Girls5Eva and Mr Mayor.

Mr Mayor was meant to be a project for Alec Baldwin but Ted Danson ended up in the title role which took place in the Los Angeles mayor’s office. Co-starring Holly Hunter and Bobby Moynihan, it wasn’t amazing but it was always good for a chuckle.

But 30 Rock, Kimmy Schmidt and Girls5Eva? Masterpieces.

No one but Fey and her team, such as frequent co-creator Robert Carlock, Girls5Eva creator Meredith Scardino and writer Jack Burditt, hits that note of heightened mischief, outlandish characters, warmth and decency, and just a bit of a bite.

Great News is on Netflix until September 27