Set at a community college in the fictional Colorado town of Greendale, the series stars an ensemble cast including Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, Ken Jeong, Chevy Chase, and Jim Rash.

He quickly becomes attracted to his classmate, social activist Britta Perry, and pretends to run a study group in order to spend time with her.

They are often roped into helping the college's flamboyant dean, Craig Pelton, in his schemes to make the school seem more respectable, as well as having to deal with the antics of their mentally unstable teacher (and eventual classmate and friend) Ben Chang.

Though Chase has often been ridiculed for his career choices, Harmon believed this role could be redeeming: "What makes Chevy and Pierce heroic is this refusal to stop.

[9] Members of the Community writing staff have included Liz Cackowski, Dino Stamatopoulos, Chris McKenna, Megan Ganz, Andy Bobrow, Alex Rubens, Tim Saccardo and Matt Warburton.

The show is known for its frequent use of thematic episodes every season, which use clichés and television tropes as single-episode concepts that play with suspension of disbelief while maintaining plot continuity.

[7] Apart from a few exterior scenes shot at Los Angeles City College, the show was filmed at the Paramount Studios lot in Hollywood, California, during seasons one through five.

[19] Most episodes feature titles designed to sound like the names of college courses such as "Introduction to Film", "Anthropology 101" and "Cooperative Calligraphy".

[40] Fans of the series began a campaign to get the show back on the air using Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, making hashtags such as #SaveCommunity, #SixSeasonsAndAMovie, and #OccupyNBC trending topics.

[48] The end of the third season also marked several other departures including executive producers Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan, writer/producer Chris McKenna and actor/writer Dino Stamatopoulos.

Frequent episode directors and executive producers Anthony and Joe Russo also left the show in order to direct Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

It features commentary on every episode by cast and crew members; gag reel; and two featurettes, "Re-Animating the '80s" and "Advanced Television Production: 5 Days, 2 Scripts, No Sleep".

Screen, including the main cast along with executive producers Dan Harmon, Chris McKenna, Russ Krasnoff, and Gary Foster.

"[72] However, Yvette Nicole Brown dropped out to care for her ailing father, although she made guest appearances in "Ladders" and "Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television".

Some focus on the daily life of Dean Pelton and others include a Spanish project, study breaks, and Abed copying his friends' lives and turning them into student films.

[88][89][90] During this period, cast members Danny Pudi, Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs and Donald Glover would each express their own interest in the film as well.

[99][100] Harmon and Andrew Guest were announced as writers, with McHale, Pudi, Brie, Jacobs, Jim Rash and Ken Jeong set to reprise their roles.

[107] During a February 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Glover was asked about his role in the movie and said: "Yeah, [Harmon] told me what he wanted, and I was like, 'This sounds great' ...

In TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time, critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz ranked Community 54th in their combined top 100 list, placing them in the section titled "Groundbreakers and Workhorses".

Club's list of the 25 best television series of 2010, Community ranked second, stating that the best episodes were "Modern Warfare", "Cooperative Calligraphy", and "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas".

"[146] Mike Hale of The New York Times has stated that the series "has been dumbed down, its humor broadened past recognition, and the two episodes provided for review...have fewer laughs between them than a single good scene from the old Community.

[122] Rotten Tomatoes gave the season a 93%, with the critical consensus reading: "With Dan Harmon back as its show runner, Community returns with a familiar new energy and more fun, exciting adventures for the Greendale gang".

"[123] Amy Amatangelo of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Everything fans loved about Community remains [...] the show has seamlessly transferred to an online venue.

"[149] The Los Angeles Times' Robert Lloyd considered "something special" about the season, commenting that it "lives in consciousness of its own construction in a kind of existential but also dramatically meaningful way.

[166] In 2012, Community was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for the episode "Remedial Chaos Theory", written by Chris McKenna.

Mordicai Knode of Tor.com suggests the show is "about the tropes of every single genre, it is about the cinematic language and the shared culture we all bring piecemeal to the table when we sit down as audiences.

Dan Harmon fills each episode with signs and references in order for the audience to deconstruct and construct their own meaning, even going so far as to break the fourth wall to give viewers a wink and a nod to the show's complexity.

Fans of Community require a "certain level of rhetorical and interpretive skills"[179] to pick up on these semiotic layers of the series:"The most important knowledge a viewer brings to the viewing of Community is the subconscious recognition of indicators for other formal systems (meaning other genres or specific texts) with help from subconscious hypotheses and charts that are built on previous experiences with similar works.

The show was called the "bright spot for the night" for NBC, seeing how The Office was down 18% from the previous year's premiere, while Parks and Recreation, in the preceding time slot, was down 30%.

[216][217] On June 26, 2020, Netflix and Hulu removed the season 2 episode "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" from their platforms due to controversial scenes with Chang playing a dark elf by wearing black make-up and a white wig, which was perceived as blackface.