The Pentaverate

"The Pentaverate" is simultaneously silly and pointless, and a welcome return to form for its star.

It is a sweet, silly, charmingly harmless thing – and funny, if you like that sort of thing, or if you are scrabbling around for any succour you can find. You could do better; you could do worse.

Underneath its mildly amusing, emotionally scattered exterior, The Pentaverate is a flawed but heartfelt ode to the importance of honesty in an era where lies are widespread and popularized.

The Pentaverate could have been good, but that would have required restraint and revision, neither of which are on display in a show that is simultaneously overindulgent and toothless.

Even with the Second City alum creating a myriad of prosthetics-laden comedic characters who are intermittently amusing, even with a few fairly clever Easter Eggs and meta jokes and callbacks to previous Mike Myers projects and some high-profile cameos, this is a decidedly flat and excessively juvenile series that wallows in a nonstop barrage of scatological humor and cheap, sexual-innuendo puns.

This is a Myers show, and it offers all the comfort and eye-rolling fatigue you’d expect from that, regardless of what year it is. That’s the resilience of juvenile humor: It never ages.

Every time “The Pentaverate” feels like it's developing a rhythm, it goes on a tangent to fill space—typically one that shows off the fact that this show is allowed to be very R-rated on Netflix. It’s like a stand-up set that has some good material surrounded by 45 minutes of filler.

Toward the end of the series, Myers tries to make some point about the internet, truth and the death of journalism, but it all just gets lost in the “technicolor yawn” of a vomit joke. ... It’s clear that this television show is actually just an overlong movie chopped into six pieces.

A tiresome compendium of half-formed characters, weak social commentary and so many groan-worthy penis and poop jokes that it’s difficult to believe the headliner was once Hollywood’s top funnyman. ... You’ve got a slog that, no matter its brief runtime, wildly overstays its welcome.

We don’t expect The Pentaverate to get much funnier as the season goes along. And the longer we watch, we think the more painfully unfunny most of the gags are going to get.