"No Activity" Renewed for Season 4 at CBS All Access
by Denise Petski
October 29, 2020


CBS All Access has officially picked up a fourth season of its original comedy series "No Activity", starring Patrick Brammall and Tim Meadows.

The formal greenlight for a fourth season had been expected. The season had already been written and the show had been gearing up for production when the pandemic brought everything to a halt.




The new season also will be a departure from previous seasons, with all characters appearing in animated form.

“We are so excited to welcome back the hilarious team behind No Activity for a fourth season and can’t wait to show fans their favorite mediocre law enforcement agents brought to life in animated form,” said Julie McNamara, EVP and Head of Programming, CBS All Access.

https://deadline.com/2020/10/no-activity-renewed-season-4-cbs-all-access-1234605635/

This season will find Special Agent Nick Cullen (Patrick Brammall) finally realizing his dream of joining the FBI, only to quickly discover being an FBI "special agent" isn't what he expected it to be.

When he's assigned to a seemingly dull observation detail, he finds a potential career case in the form of an emerging cult, and when a large scale operation takes aim at the cult, it's unclear which side will break first. Despite the promotion, Cullen's path continues to cross with former partner Judd Tolbeck's (Tim Meadows), who is also adjusting to life with a new partner of his own.

Start streaming with Paramount+ April 8.



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How No Activity pivoted from live-action to animation Season 4 to deal with the COVID crisis (https://nypost.com/2021/04/12/how-no-activity-pivoted-from-live-action-to-animation/)

Patrick Brammall, who created the Paramount+ cop comedy with Trent O'Donnell, says the idea of switching to animation "seemed like a crazy idea but was creatively interesting. We thought, ‘If that gets us a Season 4, it’s a plus.'" But going from live-action to animation posed some challenges. “We had to rewrite everything — we couldn’t just change the live-action stuff into animation,” Brammall said. “There are pauses between the actors that just don’t hold the same way (in animation). In this series, there is, quite literally, not a long going on. It was a completely different challenge.” The actors filmed their scenes via a special stand containing an iPad, lights, mic with an app that was used to capture and map their faces. The actors filmed their scenes virtually via FaceTime. “It wasn’t just ‘read your lines’; there were moments of people talking over each other, which is what we were trying to bring through, and I think we achieved that,” Brammall said. “The flip side was, because this season is built around a cult, hallucinogenics become a part of the plot, and we could do trippy stuff in animation that we couldn’t do in live-action.” ALSO: Actors were each sent "a suitcase full of tech with Ikea-level instruction" with colorful wires to attach everything together (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/16/no-activity-animation-show-coronavirus/).