It is fitting, in an age when our banks, automobile manufacturers, and insurance companies are owned primarily by Barack Obama and Uncle Sam, that our newest sitcom locale is not a bar, or a law firm, or the revolving-door apartment of upwardly mobile and fabulous twentysomethings. Our hero (or, in this case, heroine) is not an advertising executive, crass agent, or morally compromised lawyer. Instead, Leslie Knope, as played by Amy Poehler in Parks and Recreation, which premieres this Thursday night on NBC, works for the government. Sure, she’s the deputy director for the Pawnee, Indiana, Parks Department, but hey, not everybody can work in the West Wing.

Knope is an idealistic, hopeful, and endlessly optimistic do-gooder who honestly believes that government can make the world a better place. Of course, because her show is “from the people who bring you The Office”(as you might have heard 80 times if you’ve been watching NBC at any point in the last two months), she’s also deluded, kind of vain, and completely out of her depth. But she means well, and, as the saying goes, that’s close enough for government work. Corporate red tape is one thing; we now have our first show about municipal bureaucracy. The office comedy is getting a bailout.

“When we were talking about this, we were in the middle of the election,” says Parks and Recreation co-creator (and one of those former writer-producers of The Office) Michael Schur. “The economy hadn’t collapsed yet, but we got the general sense that the government was going to be playing a more significant role in years to come. We had no idea how right we were.”

Thus, the clueless bosses are no longer reporting back to the corporate home office: They’re reporting back to Washington. (Or, as the case may be, Pawnee City Hall.) On The Office, employees are shiftless, lazy, and uninspired by their work, so nothing gets done. On Parks and Recreation, it’s the opposite: Idealistic wannabe politicians and concerned citizens strive to make the world a better place, and keep getting rebuffed by democracy. Schur says that when he was doing initial research, he talked to urban planners in Claremont, California, about the show’s central conceit of Knope trying to transform an abandoned construction site into a city park. Was Schur’s idea that the project would end up Godot-ian in its inertia—the joke is that the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department can’t get it started, let alone completed—realistic? The Claremont employees laughed, because that very week, they were breaking ground on a new park. The time between project conception and initial assembly? Eighteen years. “We thought, Okay, that’ll work,” Schur says. “If our show’s on for eighteen years, we’ll be pretty happy.”

It’s like The Office, only in the public sector! isn’t the sexiest television pitch ever, yet that’s not far from how this show came about. Notoriously overstimulated NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman initially approached Office creator Greg Daniels about a spinoff. But once Daniels signed up Schur, the duo quickly dismantled the notion of a satellite Dunder Mifflin. They claim they just “couldn’t find the right fit,” though no one seems particularly upset that this isn’t just The Office: Indiana. And Parks does keep The Office’s mockumentary format—which is how Schur would shoot every show if he could: “I think it’s the best way to tell a story on television.”

So while the connection between the two shows can’t be missed, Parks is not a spinoff at all. It is, however, something of a bellwether for NBC, which has seen better days (it is currently ranked fourth among the major networks). Since the show was announced, Jay Leno has taken five hours of prime time a week, all of Silverman’s new shows have tanked, and Parks and Recreation, because of its ties to one of NBC’s lone hits, has become the last great hope. Hence the now-infamous leaking of the results of one of the show’s test screenings by Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily, which claimed audiences found the show a “carbon copy” of The Office, that it was “slow” and “predictable,” and that its male leads were “sleazy.” Focus groups have been wrong, and their observations certainly won’t be confused with the work of Pauline Kael, but it was probably not a happy day for Silverman.

Schur isn’t concerned. “That information was presented to the world as if we had sat around nervously waiting to see if people liked it, but we had long since moved on; we’d done four or five complete edits on the pilot by the time we got the focus-group results back,” he says. But clearly the ante on the show has been raised—a situation that, sensibly, everyone on set is trying to ignore. “You can’t think about stuff like all that, or you’ll go cuckoo bananas,” says Poehler, who is the most recognizable member of the cast (which includes second-most-recognizable member Rashida Jones, another Office veteran). According to Schur, Poehler is the show’s raison d’être. “Since 1997, when I first moved to New York and first saw Amy Poehler perform, I have thought she was the funniest person I’d ever met,” he says. “My goal and dream of this show was to provide a showcase for her abilities. If it works and she gets to play this character for a long time, I will have done my job.”

Poehler has had a wild twelve months: Right after finishing her Sarah Palin rap on Saturday Night Live last October, she had a child (Archie, now 5 months, with husband Will Arnett), then hopped straight to taping the Sitcom That Must Save NBC. “The first six episodes of any show are the Where are the bathrooms? period,” she says. “I did find out where they are, though I haven’t had time to use them.”

The improvisational, mockumentary approach of Daniels and Schur fits the Upright Citizens Brigade veteran’s skill set, though Poehler is quick to point out that it’s writing, not improv, that drives the show. “Usually when people say, ‘You know, have fun, do whatever you want,’ it’s because they haven’t written something funny. They’re hoping the actor will come up with a joke,” she says. “These scenes are packed with jokes.”

The day I was on set, Poehler was filming a scene with Human Giant’s Aziz Ansari, who plays an ambitious city employee who enjoys mocking the overly earnest Knope. (“He’s like what Bill Clinton was probably like when he was 27,” Schur says.) They did repeated versions of the scene, adding weird little tidbits and peculiarities each time, culminating in Ansari asking Poehler to pretend to be a Puerto Rican and describe herself. This allowed her to indulge her comedic strengths (oblivious lunacy combined with genuine good cheer), producing an uproarious, over-the-top choo a crazy white lady accent that had to be heard to be believed. It’ll never see the light of day—which is probably for the best—but Poehler continued to spit out situational riffs that rivaled and at times even surpassed Steve Carell’s famous Office soliloquies for the rest of the afternoon. Knope is as clueless as Carell’s character, but more trusting, buoyant, and, yeah, female. Her office is full of pictures of successful female politicians, from Janet Reno to Nancy Pelosi to Sarah Palin. Where Carell’s Michael Scott wants to be Tony Robbins crossed with Robin Williams, Knope wants to be Kathleen Sebelius. She’s just not very good at it. “We describe Leslie as someone who loves golf,” Schur says. “She buys expensive golf clubs, reads biographies of Sam Snead, and subscribes to Golf Digest … but she’s terrible at it. That’s how she is at politics. She’s a politics duffer.”

If 30 Rock is the caricature of what office life is like in New York (everyone pouring their lives into their jobs), and The Office is life everywhere west of New York (employees watching the clock, trying to withstand the idiots they work for), Parks and Recreation could be office life in the future: an endless barrage of red tape, dead ends, and quirky (often buffoonish) idealists who, with any luck, might pull us out of this mess. Or, at least, pull Ben Silvermen out of his.

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It’s widely assumed that most comedy comes from pain, unhappiness and conflict. How then does one explain Amy Poehler? “They were incredibly supportive,” the actress says of her parents. “But you weren’t allowed to take yourself very seriously.”

The elder Poehlers—Eileen, a retired teacher, and Bill, a retired teacher-turned-financial-planner—still live in the same house in Burlington, Massachusetts, that Amy and her younger brother, Greg, grew up in.

While pain and suffering may help, another essential and more overlooked ingredient for comedy is confidence. Bill and Eileen say their daughter’s was there from the start, but Amy credits her parents. “They gave me the feeling as a kid that there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do,” she says.

It was, by all accounts, an upbringing not unlike one that would produce Leslie Knope, Amy’s character on the NBC television series “Parks and Recreation.” Responsible, civically active parents who were supportive and fun, but not too hip, not unwilling to be made fun of by their kids and too decent to rebel against. “Tina Fey and I have talked about how a lot of the comedic ladies we know were really good girls—they were good students, they loved their parents,” Amy says.

She adds that I should “be gentle with them” during the interview. She needn’t have bothered: It soon becomes clear they can more than hold their own.

“I’m very lucky to have parents who never pressured me or gave me any sense that I wasn’t living up to some dream that they had for me,” Amy says. “It’s important when you’re young and trying to figure out what to do—I think they just didn’t force me to, I don’t know, grow up.”

Here’s their account of raising Amy …

What was the first element of personality that you noticed in Amy?

BILL: Her confidence. She was willing to try anything.

EILEEN: She was pretty feisty.

BILL: She would just jump in and succeed or fail—it wouldn’t matter. Once, in the fourth grade, the principal was on stage and he had the mike up high. Then little Amy walks across, goes up to the mike, grabs the little knob, twists it, pulls it down, and I said to myself, Oh my God, she has no stage fright whatsoever.

Was she the class clown?

BILL: Definitely not.

EILEEN: No, she was the class secretary in high school. She loved high school. She was very organized and on committees. Although she came in third—third, mind you—for most individualistic. Isn’t that a riot?

Did she and Greg play jokes on you?

BILL: On Christmas we would tell them, “You can’t get up until 6:30.” So while we were asleep she and Greg went around and moved all the clocks back three hours. So we got up at 3:30.

EILEEN: We never noticed it was still dark outside.They’re very proud of that.

When she was in elementary school, what was the most trouble she got in?

EILEEN: In the fifth grade, she and her friend brought her friend’s father’s handcuffs to class.

BILL: Because he was a policeman. (I like that he explains why lol.)

EILEEN: They handcuffed themselves to each other and lost the key. The principal called me and said, “Mrs. Poehler, there’s been a mishap.”

What about later on, in high school?

EILEEN: She covered her tracks pretty well.

Did you have a birds and bees talk with her?

EILEEN: I not only gave her the talk, I had a pamphlet, “How do you talk to your child about sex?” The poor thing, I just sort of read it to her and she was very patient.

Does she still make you laugh?

EILEEN: All the time.

BILL: Will [Arnett, Amy’s husband] and Amy like to pretend they’re us. We don’t think it’s very funny, but they think it’s hilarious.

Did you ever want her to follow you into teaching?

BILL: We would be happy if she were a teacher. When my wife graduated from high school, she only had the choice of being a teacher or a nurse.

EILEEN: That was the deal in 1964, there was nothing else at the time. Amy was a communications major at Boston College. I think maybe in our heads we were thinking newscaster or reporter or something. Although it’s an awful thing to say, and I think she would have been a fabulous teacher, I might have been silently a little bit disappointed if she went into teaching.

At college we wanted her to live on campus. But she decided to live in an apartment, which was more for artsy drama people.

BILL: Eileen and I both went to a state college and that’s where we met. I was the captain of the basketball team and she was captain of the cheerleaders. So, it was this storybook thing …

EILEEN: Oh, don’t put that in.

What about after college?

BILL: After she graduated, she’s in our kitchen and we say, “So, what do you think you’re going to do?” And she says, “I think I’m going to continue with the acting thing.”

EILEEN: Not an actress. She’s going to be an improv comedienne.

BILL: Improv. And Eileen and I, at that moment, we say, “Oh, that’s great. Do whatever makes you happy, honey.” We walk into the other room, look at each other, and say, “Oh my God! We just spent all that money and now she’s going to be an actress?”

And we were worried about how hard it would be to go into comedy and make a career out of it.

EILEEN: And it was hard.

Do you think you have influenced her sense of humor?

EILEEN: Bill thinks he’s 100-percent responsible.

BILL: I always say she gets it from me, but no one ever admits that.

EILEEN: She would prefer this interview just be me.

BILL: Amy is more nervous about this interview than she is getting up in front of millions of people. She called me and gave me a couple of test questions and I failed them all. So she said, “Dad, please just be boring.”

What would you say her comedic influences are, apart from the family?

EILEEN: She loved Gilda Radner.

BILL: Her aunt gave her a high-school graduation card that said, “I’ll see you on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ ” It was a big joke then. But lo and behold, 10 years later, there she was.

What was your favorite sketch of hers on “SNL”?

EILEEN: I was thrilled with her Hillary Clinton. I mean, Hillary Clinton!

What about least favorite?

BILL: I guess the one-legged hyperactive farting girl.

Have you ever given her sketch ideas?

BILL: I have.

EILEEN: She has not accepted one.

How does she respond?

BILL: It depends on her mood whether she lets me finish or not.

Do you ever visit her on set?

EILEEN: We recently went to “Parks and Rec,” and our biggest thrill is hearing how much the crew, from the girl who cleans the trailer to the driver to the director, like working with Amy. How good she is to everyone. She’s the same girl. We’re really proud of that.

Do you keep up with the ratings of her show?

BILL: Oh yes. I read Variety.

EILEEN: He just likes to get Variety delivered to our door.

Has reading Variety changed your opinion about show business?

BILL: Well, it does make me think that there’s a different world out there, something that myself and the people in Burlington aren’t even aware of.