Just like in the movie, the TV series follows the exploits of Hunt Stevenson (here, played by Scott Bakula as opposed to Michael Keaton in the movie), a laid-back American employee liaison of a Japanese car company in Hadleyville, Pennsylvania. Much of the humor arose from the abounding clashes between Hunt and the new Japanese plant manager, Kaz Kazuhiro (Gedde Watanabe, who was reprising his role from the movie) while looking for ways to bridge the culture gap between one another.