General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Killing It

Killing It is an American dark comedy television series created by Dan Goor and Luke Del Tredici for the streaming service Peacock, starring Craig Robinson as a down-on-his-luck Miami man who enters a state-sponsored python hunting contest in pursuit of the American dream¹. Its first season premiered on April 14, 2022, and a second season followed on August 17, 2023, for a total of 18 episodes²^•³. The show pairs its snake-hunting premise with satire of class, capitalism, and entrepreneurship in contemporary Florida².

Key fact	Detail
Network and format	Peacock; half-hour comedy, TV-MA rating²^•⁴
Creators	Dan Goor and Luke Del Tredici, showrunners, writers, and executive producers, known for Brooklyn Nine-Nine¹
Lead role	Craig Robinson as Craig Foster, a Miami bank security guard who enters a snake-hunting contest to fund his dream of becoming an entrepreneur⁵
Run	Season 1: 10 episodes from April 14, 2022; Season 2: 8 episodes from August 17, 2023; 18 episodes total²^•³^•⁴
Critical scores	96% average Tomatometer across 33 reviews and 78% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; a 78 Metascore on Metacritic²^•⁶
Real-world hook	The plot centers on the Florida Python Challenge, an actual annual state-sanctioned hunt for invasive Burmese pythons⁷^•⁸

Spoilers

Premise and characters

The series follows Craig Foster, played by Craig Robinson, a broke, divorced father working as a Miami bank security guard who hopes to start his own business⁵^•⁹. To raise money, he enters a contest that pays a $20,000 prize for killing the most specimens of an invasive snake species⁹. His partner in the hunt is Jillian Glopp, played by Claudia O'Doherty, an Australian immigrant who at her introduction works eight gig-economy jobs and sleeps inside a mobile billboard she tows behind her car⁷. The cast also includes Rell Battle as Isaiah Foster, Craig's criminally inclined younger brother; Scott MacArthur as Brock, a well-meaning but dim would-be influencer; Stephanie Nogueras as Camille; and Jet Miller as Vanessa¹⁰^•¹¹.

Structurally, the show opens with a framing device: Robinson's character appears as a successful entrepreneur in the future and recounts how he amassed his fortune, with the story flashing back to his struggles¹². Season 1 builds toward the South Florida Python Challenge and a hurricane, and ends with Craig and Jillian winning the contest and using the cash prize to start a saw palmetto berry farm⁷. Season 2 follows the farm's first shipment of berries and the pair's entanglements with social media influencers, self-help gurus, a felonious clan called the Boones who extort Craig not for cash but for a place on his payroll with health benefits, and giant African snails⁷^•³.

Development and production

The project traces to Robinson's working relationship with Goor and Del Tredici from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, where Robinson recurs as Doug Judy, the Pontiac Bandit¹. In August 2020, Peacock gave the duo a script-to-series commitment for a comedy titled Killing It, an arrangement that could bypass a pilot order if executives liked the script¹³. By February 2021 the show had a 10-episode series order, though TVLine reported at that point that it had been left untitled after previously being known as Killing It¹.

Robinson described the origin in interviews: after Brooklyn Nine-Nine was winding down, he met with Goor, and then with his manager and the two writers at a pizza joint in Hollywood; they returned with three premises, one of which involved hunting snakes in Florida for money¹⁴. Goor said Craig was attached "from day one, from before we had the original idea"¹⁵. The creators stated their aim explicitly: to satirize "the sort of almost religious fervor with which the cult of entrepreneurship and the American dream is viewed in America," with shows like Shark Tank as a reference point¹². A Peacock promotional summary described the series as being about "class, capitalism and one man who will do anything to achieve the American dream, even compete in a state-sponsored python hunt"¹⁶.

Seasons and reception

Season 1 premiered on April 14, 2022, with a 92% Tomatometer from 12 critics on Rotten Tomatoes; the critics consensus highlighted "a fun rapport between Craig Robinson and Claudia O'Doherty" and called the show "a clever satire of a dog eat dog world"¹⁷. Season 2, released in full on August 17, 2023, scored 100% from 21 reviews, with a consensus calling it "scathing as ever and even funnier than before"³. Across both seasons the site averages 96% among 33 critics and 78% among more than 100 audience ratings². Metacritic records a Metascore of 78, with all 10 of its listed critic reviews classified as positive⁶.

Critics repeatedly framed the show as economic satire. James Poniewozik of The New York Times wrote that it is "gut-bustingly, grotesquely funny" while noting that season 2 at times tried to fit too much story into its eight episodes, two fewer than the first season⁶. A Reason review called it "a critique of the modern economy's nihilistic ethics" that remains "often hilarious," and judged that the show "gets South Florida, from the swamps to the garish mansions of Instagram stars"⁷. Reviewers also noted the tonal shift between seasons: season 2 moves away from the python hunt toward a "sharper, harder, meaner" examination of what one critic called "America's dying dream"³.

The series' status after season 2 is reported inconsistently by listings: epguides marks it canceled/ended as of August 2023 with 18 episodes, while TVmaze lists its status as "To Be Determined"⁴^•¹⁰. A 2025 trade profile of Goor and Del Tredici described Killing It as a comedy that "ran on Peacock for two seasons," using the past tense¹⁸.

The real python hunt behind the show

The contest at the center of season 1 mirrors the Florida Python Challenge, an annual, state-sanctioned hunt aimed at removing invasive Burmese pythons from the Everglades⁷^•⁸. Burmese pythons, constrictors native to Southeast Asia, became established in South Florida by the 1980s through pet-trade releases and escapes, and they have severely reduced native mammal populations; the U.S. Geological Survey reports declines of 95% or more in observations of some mammal species in Everglades National Park between 1996 and 2016¹⁹. More than 16,000 pythons had been removed from Florida ecosystems since 2000 as of 2022, and a single female can lay 50 to 100 eggs at a time⁸. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission encourages the public to capture and humanely kill pythons on private land with the owner's permission, and it pays compensation only to contractors in its removal programs and to winners of the Florida Python Challenge²⁰.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Comedy, drama, and general-genre web series › Premiered 2022 to 2026

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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