The cast of Dispatches From Elsewhere took the stage at the Television Critics Association winter press tour Thursday to preview the whimsical drama anthology series, which premieres March 1 on AMC and got a new trailer, as seen above. Creator and star Jason Segel and stars Sally Field, Andre Benjamin, and Eve Lindley play four ordinary Philadelphians who feel there's something missing in their lives, but they can't quite put their finger on what that is until they're brought together by chance — or maybe by design — when they become part of unraveling a great mystery hiding just behind the veil of everyday life.

The series was inspired by Segel feeling adrift after he finished How I Met Your Mother, the CBS comedy series he was on for nine years. He was unsure of what to do next, and even a little unsure of who he was. "Suddenly, I had this blank canvas ahead of me, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to write about," he said. "I was also realizing I hadn't done an artistic check-in with myself in a really long time, and the things that I was sort of known for were no longer relevant to me. And I realized that that was a really scary and interesting feeling I hadn't encountered in a long time, not knowing what to do next. Not really knowing who I was at 34 years old, because who I was had been dictated to me for quite a long time. And I wanted to write about that. I thought that was a really interesting subject."

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Another inspiration was a series of game-like happenings created by a company called Nonchalance that Segel took part in that are dramatized in the show. He found the games — and the people in them — spiritually transformative. "I found it really moving that a bunch of people in really different stages of life, from totally different walks of life, socioeconomically, politically, ethnically. We're all taking part in this thing because something was missing from their lives. And that was just so interesting to me that we all maybe are much more alike, and much more confused, then we are being told to believe. We're supposed to see our differences, and I wanted to make a show about how we're much more similar than we realize that we are."

Dispatches From Elsewhere premieres Sunday, March 1 at 10/9c and moves to its regular time starting Monday, March 2 at 10/9c on AMC.

Jason Segel, Dispatches from Elsewhere Photo: Jessica Kourkounis/AMC

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