Rooster

If you’ve been anywhere near a television in the last few months, you’ve probably heard the name Rooster come up. It dropped on HBO in March 2026, all 10 episodes, and it became a bit of a moment. I think it pulled in something like 2.5 million viewers on its debut, HBO’s biggest comedy launch in over a decade. And once I heard those numbers, and once I heard the two names attached to it, Steve Carell and Bill Lawrence, I didn’t need any more convincing. I was in from the jump.

Now if you’re not across the Bill Lawrence connection, let me set the scene a little bit. This is the guy behind Ted Lasso and Shrinking, two shows that, if you’ve seen them, you know exactly what kind of emotional territory we’re talking about. Warm, funny, a little bit heartbreaking, with characters you end up genuinely caring about before you’ve even noticed it happening. He created Scrubs as well, which is a different era but the same DNA. And with Rooster, he’s teamed back up with his longtime producing partner Matt Tarses, who worked with him on Scrubs, and together they’ve built something that feels very much in that tradition.

The Setup

The premise is pretty clean. Steve Carell plays Greg Russo, a bestselling action-adventure novelist, a bit rough around the edges, never been to college himself, and still carrying the scars of a painful divorce from about five years back. His adult daughter Katie, played by Charly Clive, is an art history instructor at Ludlow College, a small, elite New England liberal arts school. And when we meet her, she’s in the middle of her own crisis. Her husband Archie, a fellow professor on campus, has had an affair with a graduate student, and Katie’s marriage is falling apart very publicly in a place where everyone knows each other’s business.

Greg shows up to support her. And that’s where the chaos starts.

Because the eccentric, larger-than-life president of Ludlow, played by an absolutely unhinged John C. McGinley, is a massive fan of Greg’s novels. And in a move that feels completely absurd but somehow totally plausible, he offers Greg the role of writer-in-residence for the semester. Greg sees it as a chance to be close to his daughter while she’s going through it. Katie, of course, wants absolutely nothing to do with that idea. And the deal that gets struck, where Greg teaches and in return his daughter keeps her job despite having accidentally set fire to one of the campus buildings, is such a perfect inciting premise that I was hooked by the end of the first episode.

The Cast Sells It

What I loved about this show is how much the cast sells it. And I want to start with Steve Carell because, look, this is a guy I’ve been a fan of for a long time. The Office is basically stitched into my DNA at this point. Michael Scott is one of the great comedy characters ever put on television. But what Carell has been doing in recent years is interesting to me because he keeps finding ways to play people who are fundamentally well-meaning but completely their own worst enemy, and he does it without ever letting you stop caring about them. Greg Russo fits right into that lineage. He’s overbearing, he’s oblivious about boundaries, he swoops in to fix things and usually makes them worse. But you never doubt for a second that everything he does comes from a place of love. And Carell just plays that so well. There’s a warmth to his performance that I think is really hard to manufacture.

Now here’s the thing about this show that I didn’t expect to appreciate as much as I did: the campus setting. It’s the kind of environment where everyone is watching everyone else, where rumour travels at the speed of light, and where having your personal life implode becomes a bit of a spectator sport. That fishbowl quality is what gives the comedy a lot of its energy. Greg wandering into faculty meetings he doesn’t belong in, students forming opinions about him before he’s opened his mouth, the gap between the academic world and the very non-academic man who’s suddenly dropped into it. It all works really well.

And then there’s Phil Dunster. Now, if you watched Ted Lasso, and if you didn’t, that’s a conversation we need to have separately, you know Phil Dunster as Jamie Tartt. The arrogant, cocky, ultimately kind of loveable footballer who became one of the best character arcs that show ever produced. Playing Archie in Rooster, he’s doing something similar. Archie is the husband who had the affair, so structurally he should be the villain. And on a lesser show, he probably would be. But Dunster brings this quality to him where you can absolutely see why Katie fell for this guy, and you can even, a little bit, against your better judgment, understand where he’s coming from even when he’s behaving badly. There’s a complexity to it that takes real skill to pull off, and Dunster does it with total ease. The fact that he and Bill Lawrence worked together previously on Ted Lasso clearly means there’s a shorthand there, and it shows on screen.

I have to mention John C. McGinley as Walter Mann, the college president, because this character is something else entirely. He is a devoted fan of Greg’s novels, he runs the college with an almost cult-like intensity, and he is completely unhinged in the most delightful way possible. McGinley and Bill Lawrence go all the way back to Scrubs, where McGinley played Dr. Cox, and there’s a reunion energy between them that you can feel in every scene Walter is in. I’ve read that the character is actually partially based on McGinley himself, which tells you everything you need to know about both the man and the performance.

Charly Clive as Katie is the emotional anchor of the whole thing. She’s dealing with a public breakup, a father who means well but creates chaos wherever he goes, and the pressures of trying to hold onto a career she’s worked hard for. Clive has this ability to play someone who is exhausted and frustrated and still fundamentally decent, and it’s the kind of performance that the whole show rests on without making a big deal about it. And Danielle Deadwyler as Dylan brings a real energy to the campus administration side of things. Every scene she’s in feels just a little bit more alive.

The Slow Burn, and the Ice

In terms of what didn’t quite land for me, and I’ll keep this brief because this is a show I thoroughly enjoyed, there are moments in the middle of the season where it does feel like the show is finding its feet. Some of the student subplots take a little while to pay off. A couple of episodes feel like they’re setting up dominoes that take longer to fall than you’d hope. And the pacing of the season overall is more of a slow burn than, say, the first season of Ted Lasso, which hits you pretty hard pretty quickly. But I think the patient build is worth it by the time you reach the back half, because the character dynamics have had time to develop and the payoffs feel earned.

Oh, and I have to mention the ice skating. There’s a sequence in the show where Greg gets on the ice, and if you know anything about Steve Carell’s backstory, you’ll know he was actually a goalie for his college hockey team at Denison University in Ohio. He played all four years. He was apparently quite good. And when you see him on the ice in Rooster, there are no camera tricks happening. That is genuinely Steve Carell doing what Steve Carell does. It’s a small moment in the grand scheme of things, but it made me smile quite a lot.

Final thoughts: Rooster is exactly the kind of show I want more of. It’s warm without being saccharine. It’s funny without being mean. It has something to say about family and second chances and the awkwardness of loving someone who is also a fully formed adult with their own life to navigate. The ensemble is exceptional, the setting is fresh, and Steve Carell gives a performance that reminds you why he has been one of the best of his generation for a very long time.

It is already renewed for a second season, which honestly felt inevitable the moment I hit the back half of season one. And for what it’s worth, at 10 episodes of roughly 30 minutes each, this is a show you can absolutely get through in a very comfortable weekend. It earns every minute.