The series was created by Fielder and Michael Koman and premiered on February 28, 2013, on the American cable television network Comedy Central.

[2] The series is based upon the premise of Fielder, playing a fictionalized, off-kilter version of himself, trying to use his business background and life experiences to help struggling companies and people, frequently offering them outlandish and prohibitively expensive strategies, parodying the methods of marketing and management consultants.

The show evolved out of segments on the Canadian news satire series This Hour Has 22 Minutes titled "Nathan On Your Side," wherein Fielder played a consumer advocate.

[8] Part of the series' inspiration came from Fielder's fascination with the subprime mortgage crisis, and how he found that it was rooted in "these personal moments between people where someone senses something's wrong, but they don't want to speak up.

Often, Fielder and the writing team came up with an idea specifically for the business, while other times, concepts were formed in a completely unrelated way.

Although the featured businesses were real and consented to be filmed, the employees were not told it was for a comedy show, so their reactions to Fielder's antics are genuine.

[16] The fourth season premiered on September 28, 2017, preceded by a one-hour special, "Nathan for You: A Celebration", which aired the week before.

"[19] Fielder made no efforts to promote the piece but found that websites like Gawker and Reddit quickly began reposting the video.

[20] The hoax was finally revealed in February 2013, before the series premiered, by which time the video had received seven million views.

[20] In an interview with The New York Times, Fielder marveled at how major press outlets had shared the video: "If we were trying to pull an elaborate hoax on the news, I think we could have pushed further.

[25] Episode three of the show's third season focused on Nathan's attempt to help a struggling moving company by providing the business with free labor.

The plan involved the creation and marketing of an original fitness routine called "The Movement," which would emphasize the lifting of household objects (namely boxes and furniture) for exercise, and preclude the need for practitioners to go to a gym or health club.

Marketing for "The Movement" involved a ghost-written book, which subsequently made it on to the Amazon best-seller list,[26] and several television appearances by the "inventor" and public face of the routine, bodybuilder Jack Garbarino.

"[33] John Thorp of The Guardian called its central concept "genius," finding it "functions as a razor-sharp satire of commercialism, with a surprising undercurrent of genuine pathos.

"[34] Academy Award-winning film director Errol Morris called the Season 4 finale, "Finding Frances", "unfathomably great.