NBC's 'The Good Place' ending after its next season

"The Good Place" creator Michael Schur is explaining his decision to end the acclaimed NBC afterlife comedy after its upcoming fourth season.

Emmy Award-winner Schur, who is in his early 40s, told The Hollywood Reporter that after season one, "I was like, 'Well, this show isn't a typical show where the goal is to do it as long as we can and as many episodes as we can.' It was never designed that way," he said, adding, "I didn't feel like it needed to be definitive but I needed to have a sense of how long I thought the idea could sustain itself. I came to the conclusion pretty quickly that it was four seasons."

Schur, who announced his decision Friday  at an industry panel and in a post on the show's social-media accounts, went on to say, "It was completely dictated by the idea and how much juice I thought the idea contained and the pace at which we were letting story unfold and stuff like that."

Once he had settled on four seasons he initially told no one but the writers "because I wanted to make sure that I was right and I wanted to leave open the possibility that as we as a team developed the show, I wanted to allow the possibility that something could change and there was more I wanted to do." Schur informed the cast, the network and the studio, Universal Television, near the end of shooting season three.

The ensemble comedy headed by Ted Danson and Kristin Bell, about four humans and a supernatural entity encountering moral dilemmas as they traverse the afterlife, will total 53 episodes, Schur said, "because we're doing 14 episodes this season," with an hour-long finale counting as two. No season-four airdate has been announced.