UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE (THE CHAIR)

 

If you are not watching Netflix's new sitcom 'The Chair,' wake up.

Why the hell aren't you?

Set in a fictional New England university, Amanda Peet and Annie Julia Wyman's comedy takes an acerbic look at the world of academia.

Sandra Oh stars as Dr Ji-Yoon Kim, the new chair of the English Department at Pembroke University.

And if Oh's casting wasn't enough of a recommendation, the cast also includes Jay Duplass, Bob Balaban, David Morse and David Duchovny, playing himself.

At the start of Peet and Wyman's sitcom,  Oh's Dr Kim settles into her new office behind its grandiose wooden desk.

Proud of having been elected chair of the department, she beams a broad smile, only for her chair to give way - sending her tumbling to the floor.

This turns out to be a perfect visual metaphor for the rest of the series.

Pembroke may look the part of a stuffy, New England university but its English department is falling apart.

David Morse's Dean Paul Larson wastes no time in pressurising Dr Kim to downsize a Department packed full of expensive tenured lecturers, training his sights on the three most elderly and costly academics.

Bob Balaban's Dr Elliot Rentz, Holland Taylor's Dr Joan Hambling and Ron Crawford's Professor McHale are hopelessly out of touch, struggling to draw students to their lectures on the work of Chaucer and Survey of American Letters From 1850 to 1918.

They are also paranoid about being put out to pasture.

At the start of term, Dr Rentz has a brief flurry of excitement as a student bolts into his lecture hall, only to dash back out again after being told he is not teaching Sex and the Novel, a popular course taught by Nana Mensah's rising academic star Dr Yaz McKay.

Asked by Dr Kim to oversee the process for Dr McKay's tenure, Dr Rentz is aghast that she encourages her students to tweet quotes from Melville's 'Moby Dick'.

When his course is merged with her's to boost numbers, he treats Dr McKay as his junior as if she is lucky to be piggybacking on his knowledge.

Dr Hambling is a feminist academic who has seen better days 

She never reads her students' evaluations of her lecturers and, when she does, is appalled by their snarky, withering put downs of her on the Rate My Professor website.

Dr Hambling is also smarting from having her office moved to a basement under a gymnasium.

The other star of the faculty is Jay Duplass' shambolic Dr Bill Dobson, the previous Chair of the English department who lecturers in modernism but has been plunged into grief over the past year following the death of his wife.

Told by his daughter to get his shit together as she leaves for another college, Dr Dobson drowns his sorrows in beer at the airport bar, forgets where he parked his car, urinates in front of a mum and her young child and hijacks a cart as he desperately clicks his keys to locate his vehicle.

Waking up in his daughter's bedroom, he frantically rushes to make his first lecture, realising he has not made it home in his car, stealing a scooter and crashing into a hedge before being picked up by Ella Rubin's starstruck undergrad Dafna who gives him a lift in her car in return for him signing his only, very acclaimed novel.

Stumbling into the lecture hall, Dr Dobson fumbles with his laptop and is handled a dongle by his teaching assistant, Mallory Low's Lila - only to project an old video of him flirting with his topless and pregnant wife when she was alive.

But while Peet and Wyman take aim throughout the show at the tendency of institutions like Pembroke to sell their soul for desperately needed endowments, its biggest target is the rise of cancel culture on the campus.

A Tik Tok from a student distorts a quip by Dr Dobson during a lecture about absurdism's response to Hitler to make it look as if he is a Nazi sympathiser.

A social and mainstream media firestorm erupts about him giving a Nazi salute, with students marching on the campus to demand his apology and then his sacking.

Dobson's attempts to explain how the footage was taken out of context fall on deaf ears as indignant students demand his head and academics colleagues cower. 

Concerned by the reputational damage the video has created, the university authorities put Dr Kim under pressure to sack him.

However her loyalty to Dobson is further complicated by her feelings for him and his uncanny ability to connect with her whipsmart and difficult young adopted daughter, Everly Carganilla's Ju Ju.

Fans of Tom Sharpe's Cambridge University satire 'Porterhouse Blue' and the 1987 Channel 4 miniseries it inspired will no doubt revel in the mischievous wit and occasionally bawdy, physical humour of Peet and Wyman's sitcom.

But those who have worked among academics will also recognise just how well observed 'The Chair' really is.

Peet and Wyman's writing is sharp and their gags land with a real sting.

Under Daniel Gray Longino's direction, the six half hour episodes move along stylishly with discipline and pace.

Jim Frohna's camera also captures the beauty of a university town in the depths of winter.

One of the greatest pleasures of 'The Chair' is seeing Oh cut loose in a sitcom after her stint as the straight woman to Jodie Comer's assassin in 'Killing Eve' and in the medical drama 'Grey's Anatomy'.

Never dull, she delivers a witty, often droll performance and sparks well off other members of the cast.

Duplass gives a wonderfully charming, shambolic performance as Dr Dobson, while Balaban and Taylor are a joy as stuffy relics of a bygone academic age.

Morse gamely captures the mercenary streak of an academic leader obsessed with finances and reputation.

Mensah is on point as the university's rising academic star, while Rubin and Low also contribute well as two of Dobson's biggest admirers.

Carganilla is wonderfully precocious too as Ju Ju and Ji Lee delights as Dr Kim's mostly Korean speaking father, Habi.

To cap it all, David Duchovny generously sends himself up and the tendency of universities to also cash in on celebrity star power.

If there is a criticism of 'The Chair',' it lies not with the acting, writing or directing.

It's that six episodes seems woefully short for a streaming series of this kind and you feel it could easily have accommodated at least four more.

That's a pretty good complaint to have.

Indeed, the way the first series wraps up suggests even the producers and writers of 'The Chair' were unsure of the ability of a comedy about academics to appeal to Netflix viewers.

They needn't have worried.

'The Chair' is one of the best sitcoms of 2021.

It is well written, intelligently acted, witty and occasionally laugh out loud funny.

That's all you can ask of a sitcom.

You also feel there's more mileage in a slightly longer, second series.

Here's hoping Peet and Wyman get that opportunity.

('The Chair' was made available for streaming on Netflix on August 20, 2021)

Lokasi:

Berbagi :