Who says school campuses and comedy don’t combine today? Netflix’s new sequence The Chair — debuting Friday, Aug. 20; I’ve seen all six episodes — proves they nonetheless can, mining loads of sly laughs from a supposedly humorless setting. (It’s hardly ever laugh-out-loud hilarious, thoughts you, however extra mildly “oh, that is humorous” amusing.) Wealthy with intriguing characters and armed with a breezy comedic tone, the campus comedy from first-time showrunner Amanda Peet is a great, low-key charmer that sneaks up on you.
The story takes place at Pembroke College, a prestigious however dusty Ivy League-ish school with plenty of portraits of outdated white males on the partitions. Sandra Oh stars as Jin-Yoon Kim, a devoted tutorial who has now risen to turn into the first-ever feminine chair of the varsity’s English division. She’s happy with her accomplishment, however now she’s studying how powerful it’s to be in cost, compelled to make laborious price range cuts, defuse brewing scandals and fend off overreaching directors and donors. A rich benefactor retains pushing for this 12 months’s distinguished visitor lecturer to be… David Duchovny. He went to Yale, you recognize!
Jin-Yoon’s largest drawback: Her division is suffering from a cluster of crusty outdated white professors whose large salaries and outdated instructing strategies are holding again progress. (Bob Balaban is completely forged because the imperious Elliot.) Plus, she has to babysit her division’s hottest professor: Invoice Dobson (Jay Duplass), a failed novelist and a drunken mess. (Sure, he’s a cliché, however not less than he’s conscious that he’s a cliché.) Jin-Yoon goes into disaster mode when a second of stupidity from Invoice goes viral and snowballs right into a full-blown scandal, threatening to convey the entire system crashing down.
The perpetual tradition conflict between school professors and college students is fertile floor for battle, and The Chair does boldly dip its toe into thorny points like racism, sexism and white privilege. However fortunately, it by no means will get too slowed down by these points to lose its humorousness. The gaping era hole is a dependable supply of snickers, and whereas most of Pembroke’s college students are generically woke and don’t actually stand out, nobody right here is made out to be a villain. Even the crusty outdated professors are given dimension. (It feels prefer it’s based mostly on a novel, though it’s not. It has that literary really feel to it.)
Oh has all the time proven hints of comedic aptitude on dramas like Gray’s Anatomy and Killing Eve, and it’s enjoyable to observe her get to totally discover that facet of herself right here. (Jin-Yoon is a fancy jumble of neuroses, ambition and good intentions.) Duplass is strong, too, as Invoice, however I wasn’t offered on the dynamic between him and Jin-Yoon. The present appears to need to shove them collectively romantically, when it’d be higher if it simply allow them to be mates. However Holland Taylor is a feisty deal with as Joan, a kind of crusty outdated English professors who’s exiled to the basement of the varsity’s health heart and is decided to search out out which pupil is trashing her in his instructor evaluations. It’s a goofy subplot, however Taylor has a whole lot of enjoyable with it; that is her finest function in years.
The Chair is a pleasant, tidy six-episode binge, and at about three hours whole, it seems like a barely prolonged indie-film comedy, set to a soundtrack of jangly school radio hits from the likes of Vampire Weekend and the Smiths. We all know Peet as an actress, however that is her debut as a TV author and showrunner, and he or she reveals an actual knack for humanist comedy. (Peet’s husband David Benioff and his Sport of Thrones companion D.B. Weiss function government producers, too, however don’t fear: This one sticks the touchdown.) The scripts have a distinctly dry humorousness, and the forged finds a pleasant rhythm instantly. It’s like they’re grateful to be in one thing that’s truly grounded and humorous and true to life for as soon as.
It wraps up properly as a self-contained story, too, so I’d be tremendous with it being a one-and-done sequence, I suppose — however this campus tour was so fulfilling, I’d fortunately join extra.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Netflix’s campus comedy The Chair makes the grade with a sensible, humanist tone and a wealth of intriguing characters.