Criticism of the Chair – Sandra Oh is first class in moreish academic satire | TV comedy

For those of us who were desperately waiting for the increasingly austere death of Killing Eve so that Sandra Oh could show off her comedic and dramatic characters (and all that can be said about Grey’s Anatomy, mostly emetic, that has allowed Oh many opportunities for both), The chair comes like manna from heaven.

In Netflix’s new six-part series, created by Amanda Peet and Annie Julia Wyman, Oh plays Professor Ji-Yoon Kim, who has just been named the first female chair of the English department at Pembroke College. It’s a Slightly Poisoned Chalice – Pembroke does no better than any other school in attracting students to the more liberal subjects of the liberal arts, or in persuading its outdated staff to move with the times or take its time. retirement. But Kim gets to work, all the while dealing with the growing repertoire of boundary-testing skills of her adopted daughter Ju Ju (Everly Carganilla, that rare young beast who leaves you eager to see more of both the character and the actor. ) and negotiating the growing complexities of her relationship with her crush, former peer and now subordinate, speaker Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass).

Within the department there is the kind of politics that any connoisseur of David Lodge or Porterhouse Blue or – God help you, dear reader, if that’s you – real-life academics will know all too well. The uncompromising former big hitter – here Elliot Rentz, played by Bob Balaban – who is appalled at every new thought or move that has taken place since his prime has passed. The Dean (David Morse) playing his own game, undermining Kim’s attempts to promote the young and formidable black professor Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah). Beloved senior stateswoman Joan Hambling (Holland Taylor, in perhaps the most magnificent performance of her legendary career) whose enormous personality never crosses the pulpit and dating is on the decline. They are all at loggerheads, all with grievances against each other and the world.

All of this is expertly curated by Peet and Wyman, and allows them to pack into each more greedy episode – just half an hour each, they’re far from exceeding their welcome – a plethora of problems. From racism, sexism and ageism to newer and more slippery eels such as the cancellation of culture, the clash between the practicalities of work and ideological dreams, questions of who has authority, why and how far it extends and more. Most come into play thanks to Bill after an out of context clip of him mocking Sieg Heiling in a lecture goes viral and sparked student protests on campus. will he apologize? Should he? Will the students listen? Should they?

It is the great success of the Chair to ensure that none of this feels dignified or didactic. It feels like a real exploration, a theatricalized discussion of intergenerational differences and divisions that few seek to tone down and examine with genuine interest.

And it is funny. I realize that I didn’t say much to persuade you of that. But it’s light and lighthearted and the humor is in the conversations between friends, in moments like Joan and Bill’s love flirtation over a terrible obligatory aperitif, not in the gags that I can go out and present to you. Although I enjoyed Ju Ju reading Bill’s Man’s Family when he babysits one night. She pauses briefly in her tale of human reproduction to give him advice on setting up an altar in the home so that the soul of his late wife can find it, then returns to the book. “We’re about,” she said wearily, “to see another penis. The basic problem with so much life.