Mr. Throwback

“Mr. Throwback” might not have the potential for a Hall of Fame run a la “The Office,” but it’s a quirky and cleverly offbeat entry in the mockumentary genre.

While Mr. Throwback falls short of those classics [The Office & Parks and Recreation], it is a warm, resonant, and funny show.

Does Mr. Throwback have the potential to fly off the rails? Absolutely. But the show’s creators have decided to keep the goings on relatively low-key, which actually makes the show funnier than it should be.

Tonally, “Mr. Throwback” is aiming for something like “Entourage” but with sports, mashed up with a boastful but decent-hearted loser typically dreamed up by Danny McBride (“Eastbound and Down,” “The Righteous Gemstones”) but the show never finds its voice or point of view.

We’re meant on some level to feel for him [Danny] — in a way, say, that we are not meant to feel for Larry David’s characters — he’s so consistently disappointing that one counts the minutes until the series decides it’s time for a change. In the final period, it drives hard toward a happy ending — or endings — which you may find contrived, or moving. Or even both.

Neither Wain’s comic chops behind the camera nor the rest of the talent behind this mockumentary sitcom can mitigate the feeling that Mr. Throwback is hybridizing two distinctly different forms, in a way that’s sometimes more distracting than innovative.