Rooster

As a show that keeps getting better as it goes and an ensemble that is nailing every scene, Rooster belongs at the top of your must-watch list this season.

It's already become a charming comedy filled with the warmth and clever banter of past Lawrence productions and ambitions to explore some thematic territory all its own.

Rooster stumbles at times in depicting the clash of generations, ideologies, and sexual urges on a college campus... It sets up various story and character ideas that it doesn't always have interest in following, and going back and forth on how ridiculous it finds both its setting and people on different sides of the student/faculty divide. But it also has a generosity of spirit, a warmth, and a trust in its performers, that evokes the charms of much of Lawrence's other work.

This is television for grownups. Younger viewers will roll their eyes at the lazier jokes about the generational divide (usually involving students’ hypersensitivities and mental health diagnoses) and it would indeed have been better if these could have been more focused. On the other hand, theirs is the world, so let us have these 10 half-hours, eh? Carell may not be the hero you need, but he is ours.

It’s the kind of show that doesn’t knock your socks off​, but its amiable wit is more than welcome.

It’s low stakes, soft-edged, humane, basically gentle, a little fantastic, a little farcical, well cast and well played in every instance — qualities I happen to like, and maybe you do, too.

Fast-paced and funny with an undercurrent of authentic emotion, “Rooster” is a half-hour comedy worth crowing about.

If the series can build on the momentum it builds here, “Rooster” may hit a rarified air typically reserved for the best shows, one which feels like an accurate portrait of the ups and downs of life, rendered in both comedic and tragic clarity. That, combined with a tremendously compelling central dynamic thanks to the charm and charisma of Carell and Clive, makes the trip back to school well worth it.

Though the series strikes the creator’s signature balance of humor and emotional depth, Rooster has yet to rival Shrinking, Ted Lasso, or The Office. That’s not to say the six of ten episodes made available for review weren’t a genuinely fun ride; rather, it’s a testament to the incredible heights we’ve seen both men reach.

With Lawrence vets John C. McGinley and Phil Dunster also turning out reliably bizarre and antagonistic performances, Rooster has more working parts than broken ones to keep the HBO Max comedy moving.

This is an extra-busy series that hopscotches too often. Carrel and company are all stellar and worth crowing about but plucking out a few side stories might well make this a smoother, more tonally consistent show.

You can (mostly) forgive those moments of unease as the cast gels together, and Carell yucks it up so charmingly in his tweed blazers and too-slippery shoes. When the show turns on the charm it can hook you.

Maybe just hanging out for a half-hour with characters that are fun to be around is enough. I’m not sure it always is. But “Rooster” is at least making me think that sometimes, it might be.

“Rooster” thrives on the tension between Carell’s self-deprecating likability and Greg’s relative boorishness.

Mostly, though, Archie’s indiscretion serves as a conduit to character comedy about well-meaning screw-ups trying to make good. The ensemble is large and charming. .... The only remarkable thing about Rooster, really, is that it treats a campus rocked by teacher-student sex as just another backdrop.

HBO’s Rooster, which he co-created with frequent collaborator Matt Tarses, has all the ingredients familiar to fans of both dramedies. It’s comforting, as well as a detriment, as we’ve kind of seen this before. But it’s not like Rooster doesn’t have promise.

The first six episodes feel overstuffed (with plot, characters, and jokes), but a lot of it works. The premiere is rock solid, without a wasted word and showing a strong grip on its tone, and the cast is exceptional.

If you’ve never seen Carell in anything, you will find Rooster charming and quite funny. Even if you have, you could put this series on in the background of whatever else you’re doing, and it’s perfectly pleasant. But it could be so much more if the writers weren’t clearly trying to create another Ted Lasso, with which Rooster shares a writer.

The show manages to be both intermittently amusing and highly disposable.

As good as these actors are, they can’t quite overcome the fact that “Rooster” is tonally too shifty to effectively work.

Unmoored and unpolished, “Rooster” doesn’t quite clear the bar.

Carell still has small-screen charisma to burn, and the show is charming in an insubstantial way. But it’s also forgettable, lacking both the hangout appeal of a classic sitcom and the richness that might sustain a yearslong storyline.

Aside from the occasional choice gag, its geniality dampens its silliness.

Apart from some indistinct secondary characters, the cast is largely game, but the banter-heavy dialogue can grow stale, especially when the jokes have a habit of undercutting any emotional heft.

“Rooster” is a mess, but Carell is never less than entertaining in it. .... “Rooster” remains amorphous, though; it tries for a mix of naturalistic prestige comedy and rapid-fire, stylized sitcom and just misses both.

It’s a show with an excess of underdeveloped identities, rather than a lack of identity, spackling over its poorly fused story elements with a sense of humor that’s sometimes appealing and frequently desperately hacky.