“Rooster” could be considered the third entry in what I’ll refer to as Bill Lawrence’s “Likable White Guy Failing Upward” Trilogy, assuming, of course, that he stops at three. The first was “Ted Lasso,” which was co-created by Lawrence, Joe Kelly, Brendan Hunt and Jason Sudeikis and famously focused on an American football coach hired to lead an English soccer team despite his unfamiliarity with the basic rules of the sport. The second was “Shrinking,” co-created by Lawrence, Jason Segel, and Brett Goldstein, a dramedy about a therapist named Jimmy (Segel) who breaks almost every ethical boundary that should be maintained between a mental health professional and his patients.
Now we have No. 3, “Rooster,” an HBO series that Lawrence dreamed up with Matt Tarses, a writer and executive producer on two previous Lawrence projects, “Scrubs” and “Bad Monkey.” That latter program does not qualify as a “Likable White Guy Failing Upward” show because disgraced cop Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn) does not care as much about being liked by other human beings as these other leading men do.
In “Rooster,” that leading man is Greg Russo (Steve Carell), the best-selling author of a series of airport-bookstore thrillers centered around a hero named Rooster. The series opens as Greg arrives for a speaking engagement at Ludlow College, the New England university where his daughter Katie (Charly Clive, best known for her role in the British series “Pure”) is a professor of art history.
Before the first episode ends, Greg has parlayed that less-than-successful speech—“Why do you hate women?” one confrontational literature student asks him—into an opportunity to insert himself into Katie’s personal dramas, which primarily involve her disintegrating marriage to fellow professor Archie (“Ted Lasso’s” Phil Dunster). He also reluctantly accepts a writer-in-residence gig that makes him a temporary member of the same faculty as his offspring. That means Greg will be up in Katie’s business for the foreseeable future, or at least most of season one. (HBO shared six of the first season’s ten episodes for critics’ review.)
The building blocks in Greg’s DNA are very similar to the ones in Ted’s and Jimmy’s genetic makeup. Greg is depressed and lonely because of a woman, in this case, the wife he divorced five years earlier and never stopped loving. (She is played by Connie Britton, which explains, at least in part, why Greg is still not over her.) He has also found great success despite ample evidence that perhaps he should not be as successful as he is. This man, a published author, admits he has never read “Moby Dick.” He also abandons an in-class brainstorming exercise when he realizes he has no idea how to spell the words his students are suggesting he write on the whiteboard. (“Conscientious” is a no-go. So is “irascible.”)
Greg gets lightly disciplined for multiple instances of inappropriate behavior that “Rooster” portrays as wild accidents that are in no way the man’s fault, but rather, reflect the overly sensitive nature of modern university life. This is why, at one point, I wrote in my notes: “Did he really have to fall on that girl’s boobs?” The world may be filled with creepy men, but this show wants us to know that Greg is not one of them. He’s just clumsy and sad and deals with his feelings by listening to music that belongs on the playlist at a coffee shop exclusively for melancholy Gen Xers. “This song is how I feel every day,” he moans drunkenly at a frat party, a place a professor definitely should not be, while listening repeatedly to “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. Like the heroes in the Bill Lawrence-iverse, but especially Segel’s Jimmy, Greg believes that a lack of proper professional boundaries can somehow set him on a path toward self-actualization. Which is a maddeningly idiotic life philosophy.
And yet, like Lawrence’s other shows, “Rooster” is breezy and engaging to watch, just as long as you don’t allow yourself to think too hard about what it’s trying to say. It helps enormously that Greg is played by Carell, an actor who knows exactly how to wrap cringiness and warm humanity into the same performance. Giving him this role is the equivalent of asking LeBron James to make an easy lay-up. He’s what makes it possible to imagine Greg might actually be a real person, rather than a caricature of a dude who constantly finds himself in preposterous situations. (Did I mention that Greg also trips, starts doing the “Walk Like an Egyptian” dance to make it seem intentional, then gets a slap on the wrist from the college’s higher-ups for being culturally insensitive? He does. He really does.)
The entire series is well-cast, but there are some standouts. Danielle Deadwyler suffers no fools in the most delightful possible way as a professor of writing and literature who befriends Greg; it’s great to see her follow up her terrific turn on season four of “The Bear” with more evidence of her comedic skills. Rory Scovell pops up in multiple episodes as a bumbling local cop who, quite possibly, has less going on in the intelligence department than Deputy Andy Brennan from “Twin Peaks.” But Scovell pours his own idiosyncratic obliviousness into this guy, a police officer who repeatedly forgets where he’s left his gun and once dropped out of high school to follow Limp Bizkit on tour. He explains that second piece of information with a nostalgic fondness that is as endearing as it is absurd.
Then there’s John C. McGinley, who gets to channel his gift for playing arrogant blowhards—see Dr. Perry Cox from Lawrence’s “Scrubs”—into Walter Mann, the president of Ludlow College, who would always rather be doing a cold plunge than engaging in the business of running a university. McGinley delivers every one of his lines as if Walter is a boxer in a hurry who just needs to get in a few jabs before his next appointment. “She looks ridiculous, Greg,” he barks before Greg can finish apologizing for criticizing the kimono that Walter’s wife is wearing. “She has chopsticks in her hair, for God’s sake.” Every comment is a punch. Every joke lands.
As good as these actors are, they can’t quite overcome the fact that “Rooster” is tonally too shifty to effectively work. The comedy asks us to believe in and root for its characters because they are decent human beings trying their best. But then it forces those same characters to do things that make them seem like assholes. “Rooster” wants us to empathize with the realities these individuals are facing while putting them in often totally unrealistic situations. Again, this is true of much of Lawrence’s work. But in its first two seasons at least, “Ted Lasso” offered enough cozy charms to make those inconsistencies easier to overlook. “Shrinking,” meanwhile, has Harrison Ford, a bullshit detector in Hollywood-legend form, keeping that show somewhat tethered to Earth. But at least in its first six episodes, “Rooster” is still trying, almost as clumsily as Greg, to find its center of gravity.
Six episodes screened for review. Premieres on HBO Sunday, March 8th, 2026.
