# Search Party (2016)

> Four self-absorbed twenty-somethings in Brooklyn turn a former college acquaintance's disappearance into an obsessive, increasingly sinister amateur investigation.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/59512

## Facts

- Seasons: 5
- Episodes: 50
- Episode runtime: 22 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: comedy, drama, crime, mystery
- Created by: Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers
- Network: TBS, HBO Max
- Cast: Alia Shawkat, John Reynolds, John Early, Meredith Hagner, Brandon Micheal Hall, Katie Maguire, Natasha Rothwell, Sunita Mani
- TMDB rating: 7.6/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5460226/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: moderate
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: mild
- Tone: cringe comedy, sardonic, unsettling, darkly comic, tense

## What critics say

Viewers broadly rate the series positively for its sharp dark comedy and cast, with enthusiasm fading in its later seasons.

## Synopsis

Search Party (2016-2022) is an American dark comedy mystery series created by Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers for TBS, later streaming on HBO Max. Alia Shawkat plays Dory Sief, a restless young woman whose ordinary life is upended when a former college acquaintance vanishes, and John Reynolds, John Early and Meredith Hagner play her self-absorbed friends Drew Gardner, Elliott Goss and Portia Davenport. Their engine is simple and absurd: they want to matter, and they pursue the missing person as a personal project, stumbling through clues with no training while their vanity and petty rivalries get in the way. The series runs five seasons of ten episodes each, one continuing story rather than case-of-the-week episodes, with the mystery growing darker and more conspiratorial as it goes. Set in contemporary Brooklyn among millennial hipsters, it balances sharp satire of entitlement with unsettling suspense and moments of real emotional sting. Its cringe-driven comedy and eerie tension recall the self-involved humor of Girls and Fleabag and the uneasy small-town mystery of Twin Peaks, and fans of those shows will find resonance here.

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