Netflix’s first look of Mulligan gives us the premise of the show—almost everyone on Earth is killed by an alien invasion, and those few who survive are now led by a guy from Boston (voiced by Nat Faxon) whose only work experience involved letting scientists spray perfume in his eyes.
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The series is showrun by Robert Carlock and Sam Means, producers whose previous credits include 30 Rock, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Friends. Here’s the show’s official synopsis:
After Earth is destroyed by an alien attack, a rag-tag band of survivors has to start society over from scratch. It’s an opportunity to learn from humanity’s past mistakes and get things right this time. Or make the same mistakes all over again. Probably the second one.
What’s most exciting to me about the show, however, is the rest of the voice cast. In addition to Faxon as the titular Matty Mulligan, the show features Chrissy Teigen as Lucy, the Miss American winner who becomes the de facto First Lady after getting romantically entangled with Mulligan after he saves the world; Tina Fey as the scientist Dr. Farrah Braun; Sam Richardson as Simon Prioleau, the only surviving historian; Dana Carvey as Senator Cartwright LaMarr; Phil LaMarr as Axatrax, the only surviving alien (and possibly the inspiration for the name of Carvey’s character?); Kevin Michael Richardson as the cyborg TOD-209; Ayo Edebiri as “General Scarpaccio,” who is really just a teenager who stole a military uniform off of a corpse and is now leading the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Daniel Radcliffe(!) as King Jeremy, a son of an English Lord who declares himself King after he realizes he’s the only Brit left alive; and, Ronny Chieng as Johnny Zhao, a Hong Kong billionaire who wants to make money a thing again.
Whew! That’s quite the cast, and we can hear them all in action when Mulligan premieres on Netflix on May 12, 2023.