Review of the new Steve Carell comedy

On streaming service Now TV, Rooster is categorised as a ‘darkly funny drama’, which places some heavy expectations on what is actually an easy-going Steve Carell comedy from Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence.

Admittedly there is more narrative – and heart – to this college-set series than simple laughs as The Office star’s character, Greg Russo, reconnects with his daughter after her marriage breakdown became the talk of the Ivy League campus where she teaches.

But show very much foregrounds the laughs, many of them coming predominantly from Carell’s trademark awkward bumbling. While Russo is a successful author of trashy airport novels, full of sex and guns – which of course leads to some friction with the woke students of Ludlow College – he shares none of the gung-ho attitudes of his womanising detective, Rooster. Instead, when he’s invited into the home of an attractive academic after a night of stimulating chat, he becomes a bumbling mess of insecurity, creating a scene of the most exquisite cringe as he grapples with his shyness.

Charlie Clive – the British comedian known for her live show and TV spin-off, Britney, about her brain tumour – plays Russo’s daughter Katie. Though superficial winsome, she’s prone to erratic behaviour when it comes to her ex (Ted Lasso’s Phil Dunster), who left her for a grad student – leading to comically exaggerated consequences.

The scrapes she and her father get into are slapstick, but played straight. In their lives they are definitely in a drama not a comedy. Their relationship – affectionate and mutually exasperated in equal measure – gives the show an emotional core, along with both characters’ uncertain attempts to define themselves amid shifting circumstances. Dad wants to hand down fatherly advice, daughter doesn’t always want to hear it. 

More outrageously funny is John C McGinley – best known to sitcom fans as the archly cynical Dr Perry Cox in another Lawrence hit, Scrubs. Here he’s playing the college president Walter Mann, hoping to return his institution to old-school principles before political correctness and openness about mental health. Hence his offer to Russo to become writer-in-residence to redress the balance.

While the culture wars angle is present, it is underplayed – and probably advisedly so, given how one-note that can become. Instead Mann is a cartoonishly ridiculous figure, prone to semi-nudity to show off his physique and very keenly advocating for a sauna and ice bath regime to banish ‘brown fat’. He imagines Russo’s reaction to him would be: ‘Most college presidents are bookish shut-ins, but this guy is jacked!’

Such unapologetic comic relief sits neatly alongside Carell’s delightful brand of self-conscious discomfort – helping give Rooster the winning mix of charm, sentiment and stupidity that defines creator Lawrence’s best work. 

• Rooster launched on Sky Comedy last night and is now available to catch-up on Now TV.

Review date: 10 Mar 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett