Rooster TV review: The diverting delights of Steve Carell’s gentle HBO campus comedy

OK, no one in the new HBO series Rooster behaves quite like how real people act. But that’s part of its appeal.

There are TV shows and movies that go for social realism, where every line of dialogue and every physical gesture feels grounded in naturalistic humanism, and then there are those that are deliberately absurd and exaggerated but still have a core of emotional truth.

Rooster sits somewhere in the middle because it does have characters who climb up trees to spy through windows, accidentally start fires or is freakishly good at beer pong, but it’s not so arch as to be satire.

What it is, is pleasurable. It’s that classic American blend of comedy and drama, of middle-class characters whose problems have stakes but so much as to actually stress you out and yank you back into the real world.

Rooster is escapism, but not in that braindead Emily in Paris way. That it’s not entirely realistic is the point.

Its diversionary delights are about creating a world you want to spend some time in because it makes you smile, laugh and occasionally go, “no, no, you should not be tongue-kissing that or any dog”.

It also happens to be a campus story (always a joy) and packs it out with actors you want to watch, including Steve Carell and Danielle Deadwyler who lead the main cast while the likes of Alan Ruck, Connie Britton and Robby Hoffman pop in as recurring characters.

If Rooster is following a gentle comedy formula that is 25 per cent goofy, 20 per cent slightly sentimental, 15 per cent cutting wit, 10 per cent New England autumnal wardrobe, and 30 per cent easy charm, then it’s one that’s hard to resist.

Carell plays Greg, a successful writer whose pulpy books feature a macho action alter ego. His daughter Katie (Charly Clive) is an art history professor at a small, ivy-covered American college, whose marriage to another teacher, Archie (Phil Dunster), has publicly crumbled after he cheated on her with a grad student, Sunny (Lauren Tsai).

Greg never went to college himself, but after visiting Katie, he is dragooned into becoming its writer-in-residence by the mercurial president Walter (John C. McGinley), who loves nothing more than a sauna-and-cold-plunge sesh.

Despite coming from the different worlds of popular publishing and literary academia, Greg also hits it off with another professor, Dylan (Deadwyler), as well as Walter’s EA, Cristle (Annie Mumolo).

Rooster, of which six of its 10 episodes were made available for review, is an easy-to-digest series, and that might sound like a jibe but it’s not.

There are plenty of other shows that are provocative (Pluribus), spiky (I Love LA), anxiety-inducing (Industry), belly laughs cringe (The Studio), experimental (Fantasmas) or important (The Pitt). They all have their place in a TV rotation.

But there’s also a place for something that is just genial and enjoyable.

Rooster was co-created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses, and Lawrence is on a tear at the moment with that brand of character-driven comedy-drama - Shrinking now on its third season, Ted Lasso returning for a fourth, and the revival of Scrubs was better than anyone had to right the expect.

Rooster is not exactly the same tone as those other projects, just as they’re all a bit different from each other, but it is of a related DNA.

It’s a tone thing, and if you’re in tune with its vibe, you’re going devour the whole thing with great contentment.

Rooster is streaming on HBO Max with new episodes on Mondays