When American Sitcoms Go To London, There's One Guy They Will Definitely Meet

What are the chances that two sitcoms that air on Thursday nights and whose leads have guested on one another's shows would both air double-sized episodes set in London and guest-starring Peter Serafinowicz as a British archetype on the same night?!

...Okay, now that I see it all written out like that, I guess the chances were pretty good.

AmeriSitcoLondFinowicz night (and, hello, where was that sponsored hashtag?) kicked off on NBC with the season premiere of Parks & Recreation, which finds Leslie (Amy Poehler) winning an award from an international women's political association and travelling, along with several of her colleagues, to London to receive it. Along the way, Ben (Adam Scott) and the newly buff Andy (Chris Pratt) -- who explains his new physique as the result of having stopped drinking beer for a month (hee hee) and consequently losing fifty pounds -- pay a visit to a Lord Covington (Serafinowicz), in the hopes of getting his charitable fund to support the Sweetums Foundation's music education initiative. In this case, the British archetype Serafinowicz portrays is a scion of old money (the oldest, from the sounds of it) who has beautiful manners but little sense of how to manage the unimaginable wealth at his disposal. Covington and Andy have an immediate affinity for one another, and Covington asks Andy to stay in London for three months so that the show has a pretext for Andy not to be in a bunch of episodes while Chris Pratt films Guardians Of The Galaxy Andy can help him figure out how to run his foundation. Yep, great idea. Andy was born for that assignment.

Though Poehler doesn't have any scenes with Serafinowicz, his having been cast on the show may be more proof that she and Will Arnett are having the world's most amicable divorce: Serafinowicz formerly co-starred with Arnett on the short-lived Running Wilde. I know what you're thinking: just because the two worked on a sitcom together, that doesn't necessarily mean they're super-close. But trust me: they're close.

Later in the evening, NTSF: SD: SUV:: also sent its cast to London (technically the independent "Little Britain" district of San Diego, but: London). While Trent (Paul Scheer) works with local cops, and Daisy and Piper (Karen Gillan and June Diane Raphael) go undercover as an American heiress and her coarse lady's maid, Sam (Martin Starr) accidentally falls in with a crew of street urchins in the thrall of the evil "Sagan" (Serafinowicz), and learns how to pick pockets, and if you don't know what British archetype that role represents, you've either never been an English major or are extremely unfamiliar with 20th century musical theatre.

Serafinowicz is already an NTSF cast member, kind of: he voices the robot, S.A.M. -- with whom, we learned last night, it is apparently not illegal to have sex. So even if Sagan is a one-off character, at least the actor will remain in a vocal capacity. Meanwhile, Lord Covington's relevance for Parks is potentially open-ended: maybe when Andy's three months are up, Covington will be able to deliver him to Pawnee in one of his two helicopters? In any case, I recommend that we all pass the time waiting for that by watching The Peter Serafinowicz Show. And here's why.