Rooster: Review

Steve Carell’s swapping the Office for the campus in this new university-set comedy that sees his pulpy book author Greg Russo dropping by to help out his college professor daughter Katie after her husband, a fellow academic, has an affair.

It’s an incongruous pitch for a comedy, to be frank, but where Rooster works is the way the story gets its hooks into you. This is not a series that delivers consistently belly-inducing laughs, but with subtle writing and smart deadpan delivery from Carell and a script from Ted Lasso’s creator Bill Lawrence, it has just something indefinable that works.

It helps that the ensemble cast is particularly strong as Russo finds himself in more and more outlandish situations – in the first episode alone, he’s forced to run away after camping out in the campus bushes to spy on his daughter’s husband and ends up inadvertently watching two lesbians kiss. It’s a moment that in any other situation probably wouldn’t work – but in Carell’s hands, it’s riotously funny and memorable.

John C McGinley also shines as the college’s dean who leans on Rooster to take on a role on campus, ensuring that he sticks around. From espousing moments in his steam room to delivering the kind of material he excelled in in Scrubs (surely, no coincidence the same writer’s behind the barbs), he’s a memorable addition to the show.

And in amongst it all, is Carell, a comedian whose delivery and whose cadences have improved with age. There’s no denying there are moments of Michael Scott in Greg Russo, but whereas Scott was a buffoon with a heart, Russo is an educated man, prone to mishaps and blessed with heart too – it’s a subtle difference. From dealing with his daughter’s problems, battling wits with the campus cop to finding himself constantly having to apologise formally for missteps, the escalating stupidity is hard to allay and even more difficult to put to one side, thanks to his efforts.

Like most campus-set comedies, there’s some frat boy hijinks in later episodes, but Lawrence and co-creator Matt Tarses ensure these don’t feel out of place or episodic in their nature.

Rooster is a clever comedy, that rewards persistence and which offers a smart rejoinder to other dumb campus-set shenanigans. For that alone, it’s well worth an investment of your time.

Six of ten episodes of Rooster series 1 were available and viewed for the purposes of this review.