When Comedy Central ordered “Detroiters” — which they created with the “Saturday Night Live” alumni Zach Kanin and Joe Kelly — and agreed to film it on location, the pair made the show as homegrown as possible. (The series pilot benefited from a Michigan state film incentive program, but by the time the series got the green light, new legislation had nixed the initiative.) The bouncy earworm theme song? Written by the artist and sneaker entrepreneur Rick Williams, a high school friend of Mr. Robinson’s, produced by John Jay Henry of Detroit, and sung by Yolanda Williams, Mr. Williams’s wife. The blizzard of cyclist extras in Episode 2? Members of Slow Roll Detroit, a group of biking enthusiasts.

Between crew and cast, “Detroiters” hired more than 200 people from the area — and drafted seven interns from Grow Detroit Young Talent, a city jobs program. The show coaxed Hollywood actors with Detroit backgrounds — like Keegan-Michael Key, who once taught Mr. Robinson improv — to guest-star. They spread their shots across Detroit locations both majestic and mundane. A swanky gala scene was set at the Detroit Institute of Art; Mr. Richardson fretted about doing a monologue involving his genitals in front of a Diego Rivera painting. “It felt like sacrilege,” he said.

Location scouts secured a pair of classic Victorians in the Woodbridge neighborhood to serve as the exteriors of the characters’ adjacent homes. The one belonging to Sam is distinctly half-renovated. “The back story is that when the economy turned, I bought this house for $20,000 and had that ambitiousness of ‘I’m gonna flip this house, here we go, easy breezy,’” Mr. Richardson said, laughing. “And then I just can’t. I don’t have the skills. That to me felt very in the spirit of Detroit.”

The most visible local addition is Shawntay Dalon, a Detroit actress who had just moved to Hollywood when she was invited to audition for the show. She recorded her audition in an apartment stuffed with six other actors. A few weeks and a callback later, Ms. Dalon learned she had won the part of the female lead. It was time to go home.

The familiarity felt surreal to Ms. Dalon as she began playing Chrissy, who is Sam’s sister, Tim’s wife and an assembly line worker at Chrysler. (In real life, Mr. Robinson’s wife is an electrical engineer for the company.) “We’d be shooting outside, and across the street, neighbors would be sitting on their porches yelling: ‘Yeah! That looks funny!’” Ms. Dalon said. “That used to be me. I could never walk by anything filming.”

The result of all this effort is a show that feels cheerily authentic. Though a creative class of Detroiters has rallied to revive the city’s food, art and fashion scenes, “Detroiters” is more likely to linger on a shot of a middle-class neighborhood or public park than highlight hipster hallmarks of urban revitalization, like microbreweries or gastro pubs. That’s because, as Jason Sudeikis, who plays a Chrysler executive and is one of the executive producers, puts it, the show sees Detroit as a place that draws strength from its past and present as much as from its future. “Detroit’s story is one of falling away and coming back and maintaining,” he said. “The idea behind the show was that notion of hope, the idea of this blue-collar Midwest work ethic.”

But despite the pride friends, family and other Detroiters feel for the city finally getting a loving screen treatment from returning natives, Mr. Robinson noted there is one downside to being a hometown hero of sorts: “My mom is always like, ‘You know, it’s your uncle’s birthday on Sunday, and you’re in town.’ And I’m like, ‘Aw, man. I guess I am in town.’”