Rooster (2026) • Season 1 Review • Contains Spoilers

Created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses and starring Steve Carell, Charly Clive, Danielle Deadwyler, Phil Dunster and John C. McGinley, Rooster is the 2026 HBO comedy series that became the network's most watched new comedy in over a decade. Carell plays Greg Russo, a bestselling novelist who lands at a New England college campus to support his daughter through a very public marriage breakdown, and ends up staying for the semester.

In this review, Fraser shares why the show's best dynamic isn't the one on the poster, the on-screen moment that sent him straight back down The Office rabbit hole, and the piece of real-life Steve Carell trivia that makes one late-season scene land even better.

🎬 COMING UP NEXT

Next Review: Backrooms

Fraser takes on Backrooms, the 2026 horror film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve and Mark Duplass. Can a YouTube sensation's feature debut really live up to the internet's scariest idea? And how did a film this small become A24's biggest hit ever?

Thanks for listening to Frame 70 Reviews. New reviews every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, along with classics revisited in From the Vault. Every review in full at frame70.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

What's up everybody, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm Fraser, your host, and today we're taking a look at Rooster, the 2026 comedy series created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarsus, and starring Steve Carell, Charlie Clive, Danielle Deadweiler, Phil Dunster, and John C. McGinley. And as always, we're answering one simple question. Is it worth your time? Let's get into it. What can I say? Another TV show with Steve Carell in it, and I'm signed up. It's honestly that simple for me at this point. I'm obviously a massive fan of his from The Office. That's where most of us fell for the guy, but it goes way beyond that now. He's put together this career where he can do anything. He's been brilliant doing drama, and I mean properly brilliant, the kind of dramatic work that makes you forget you're watching Michael Scott. Go watch him in Foxcatcher if you haven't, or the morning show, and tell me that's the same bloke who spent seven seasons running a paper company in Scranton. The range on this man is ridiculous. And then he had that very, very brief stint in the four seasons on Netflix, which was also great. And it's been good seeing him step out of his comfort zone now and then, away from pure comedy into heavier territory. But when I saw the trailer for Rooster, I could tell straight away this was Carell coming back to the warm, wholesome, slightly chaotic comedy zone that he does better than just about anyone, and the trailer looked very, very fun. I was in before the trailer even finished. So let's set the table a little bit, because the pedigree behind this show is worth talking about. Rooster comes from Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarsus, and if the name Bill Lawrence sounds familiar, it should. This is the guy behind Scrubs, Ted Lasso and Shrinking. The man has basically cornered the market on shows that make you laugh, and then quietly sneak up and punch you in the feelings when you least expect it. And Rooster fits right into that wheelhouse. It's a 10-episode season, each one sitting around the 30-minute mark, and it landed on HBO in March this year. And here's a little bit of streaming industry goodness for you because you know I love this stuff. Rooster came out of the gate as HBO's most watched new comedy in over a decade. The first handful of episodes were pulling close to 6 million viewers in the US alone, and HBO turned around and renewed it for a second season barely a month into its run. And look, after watching studios take amazing first seasons out behind the shed for years now, it is so refreshing to see a show do the numbers, get the love, and get its renewal locked in quickly. No agonizing wait, no cancellation announcement dropped quietly on a Friday afternoon. Just a good show getting rewarded. More of that, please. Right, so what is Rooster actually about? Steve Carell plays Greg Russo, a best-selling action-adventure novelist whose big claim to fame is a book series built around a character called Rooster. And Rooster, the character, is quite flamboyant, larger than life, everything Greg himself is not. And here's the fun little wrinkle. Greg never actually went to college himself. He's this hugely successful author who skipped the whole university experience entirely. The show is smart about how it handles the books too. You don't get too much of what he's actually written. It drips it out now and then, especially once he starts teaching, and honestly, I think that restraint works. It keeps Rooster the character as this slightly mysterious presence hanging over Greg's whole life. So the season kicks off with Greg arriving at Ludlow College, this elite little liberal arts campus in New England, and he's there to support his daughter Katie, played by Charlie Clive. Katie is an art history instructor at Ludlow, and her marriage has just imploded because her husband, who is also a professor at the college, has been having an affair with a graduate student, so she is going through an absolutely brutal, very public campus breakup, and her dad has swooped in to make sure she's okay. Whether she wants him there or not. And spoiler, she mostly does not. Now here's where the premise gets its engine. The president of Ludlow College, Walter Mann, played by John C. McGinley, turns out to be a massive super fan of the Rooster books, and he wants Greg to stick around as the college's writer in residence, teaching classes on campus, and Greg's not interested until Katie lands herself in serious hot water. There's an incident, and I'll keep it vague because we're staying spoiler-free, but Katie accidentally sets fire to one of the campus buildings and suddenly her whole future at Ludlow is hanging by a thread. So Greg cuts a deal. He'll take the teaching gig, but his one strict prerequisite is simple. If I do this, my daughter stays. And the college president, being the Rooster Super fan that he is, is completely fine with that arrangement, which tells you everything you need to know about Walter Mann as a character. The man's priorities are spectacular. And a quick side note for anyone who grew up watching Scrubs, seeing John C. McGinley back in a Bill Lawrence show is an absolute treat. He's not playing Dr. Cox here. This is a completely different flavor of Intense, but he brings that same unhinged energy and he is a joy every single time he's on screen. So once that initial premise locks into place, the show branches out beautifully. Greg starts teaching his classes and gets to know a few of his students quite closely, and through them he starts experiencing the campus life he never had. Katie is trying to get over her husband, while the graduate student he had the affair with is walking around the same campus, which is exactly as awkward and messy as it sounds. Then Greg's ex-wife Beth turns up, played by Connie Britton, and she's got her own ambitions tied up in the school, and that brings a whole other dynamic crashing into the mix. Because now Greg isn't just navigating his daughter's crisis, he's navigating his own history at the same time, on a campus that keeps getting smaller by the episode. Let me get into what really worked for me, and I have to start with the thing that surprised me most. Because on paper it's a side dynamic, but in practice, it might be the best thing in the show. Greg's relationship with his son-in-law, or I should say his soon-to-be ex-son-in-law Archie, played by Phil Dunster. Greg just completely despises him, utterly, deeply, comprehensively dislikes the man, and every scene they share together is gold. There's this simmering, barely polite contempt that Carell plays so well because Greg is fundamentally a nice guy, so he can't even be properly hostile. He just radiates disapproval in this wonderfully passive-aggressive dad way. And Dunster is brilliant as the husband who had the affair. If you don't recognize the name, this is the guy who does some really good stuff in Ted Lasso, and he's clearly having a great time playing someone you love to hate. The clever thing the writing does is it never lets Archie become a cartoon villain. He's charming enough that you understand how Katie ended up with him, and awful enough that you're firmly team Greg the entire time. That balance is really hard to pull off, and this show nails it. But the beating heart of the whole thing is the father-daughter relationship, and this is where Rooster earns its place in the Bill Lawrence catalogue. Because here's the thing about Greg: he is well meaning to a fault. Every instinct he has is to swoop in and fix his daughter's problems, and every single time he does, it causes chaos. And Katie, played wonderfully by Charlie Clive, is this fiercely independent woman trying to rebuild her life, work towards tenure, and survive the most humiliating chapter of her adult existence. All while her famous dad fishbowls her entire world. The tension between a parent who can't stop parenting and an adult child who needs them to stop is something so many people are going to recognize from one side of that fence or the other. Both of them have their issues. Neither of them is completely right or completely wrong, and watching them slowly work it out over 10 episodes is honestly the good stuff. That's the show. Charlie Clive deserves a special mention here too, by the way. She's a British actress, and if you've seen The Lazarus Project, you might recognize her, but for a lot of people, this is going to be their introduction to her, and she goes toe to toe with Steve Carell in scene after scene and never once gets blown off the screen. Holding your own opposite Corell in full charm mode is no small thing. And then there's the supporting cast because this thing is stacked. It is absolutely loaded with a very, very good cast. Danielle Deadweiler plays Dylan, a poetry professor at Ludlow who becomes a real anchor in Greg's campus life, and she's fantastic. She's coming off years of heavy dramatic work in films like Till and the Piano Lesson, and you can feel how much fun she's having, getting to be light and warm and funny here. Her scenes with Carell have this lovely, easy chemistry. Connie Britton as the ex-wife brings exactly the kind of presence you'd expect from Connie Britton. Lauren Sai does strong work in a role that could have been thankless. Every single person in this ensemble understood the assignment. The other thing I want to touch on is the campus itself and the way Greg experiences it. Remember, this is a man who never went to college, who built a whole career and a whole identity without ever setting foot in a lecture hall, and now he's living the university experience for the first time in his 50s. Watching him stumble through his first classes, slowly getting to know a few of his students quite closely, getting drawn into their problems and their lives, that stuff is quietly some of the most rewarding material in the season. Because the show isn't just using the students as background decoration. A few of them become real characters, and Greg's relationships with them end up mattering just as much as anything happening in his family. It's that classic Bill Lawrence found family thing. If you've watched Ted Lasso or Shrinking, you know exactly the atmosphere I'm talking about, this warm little community that slowly assembles itself around the main character until, by the finale, you realize you'd happily just hang out in this world with these people even if nothing was happening. Ludlow College becomes a place you want to visit. That's a hard quality to manufacture, and Lauren's shows seem to bottle it every single time. Now what didn't work, and I'll be honest with you, this is a short section because this show connected with me almost front to back. But if I'm picking at things, some of the story beats you can absolutely see coming from a mile away. There's a stretch in the middle of the season where Katie ends up having a few flings back with her ex-husband. That whole will they won't they relapse phase, and when it happened, I just went, yep, of course. Because that's obviously how it goes, it's the most predictable move in the breakup storyline playbook. Now, to the show's credit, it uses that detour to get somewhere worthwhile. But in the moment it did feel like the season was following a well-worn map rather than drawing its own. And I'd say the same about a couple of the campus subplots, they're enjoyable, but you've seen the shape of them before in other shows. This is Comfort Food Television, and occasionally comfort food means you know exactly what's coming with every bite. For me, that trade-off was worth it. Your mileage may vary. Alright, it's time for the frame 70 moment, and for a show full of lovely character beats, the moment that stayed with me after the credits rolled was a simple one. Late in the season, you get to see a bit of Steve Carell out on the ice, ice skating, and here's why that hit different for me. If you don't know anything about Steve Carell's backstory, the man is a brilliant ice skater. He played ice hockey back in his college days, this is a real thing, and he's shown it off before. If you go back through the office, there's an episode where Michael gets out on the ice, and even there you could tell, oh hang on, this guy is properly good at this. So when Rooster puts him on skates, it's not a stunt double, and it's not movie magic. That's just Steve Carell doing something he's quietly been excellent at his whole life. And there's something about seeing a show let its lead actor bring a genuine piece of himself into the character like that. It's a small moment, it's not the biggest scene in the season, but it's the one I kept thinking about afterwards, and it sent me straight back down the office rabbit hole looking up that ice skating episode again. That's the sign of a good frame 70 moment right there. So, final thoughts before the verdict. Rooster is exactly what it promises to be. It's a warm, funny, big-hearted show about a father and a daughter who both have their own issues and who slowly, messily resolve them across 10 episodes. By the end of the season, Katie has finally realized just how much of an arse her ex-husband really is, and Greg has discovered something he never expected that he actually loves teaching. As much as he protested the whole way through, by the finale he's the one turning around and asking if he can come back for another year, and given HBO has already locked in season two, it looks like he's getting his wish. And so are we. What I appreciated most sitting with it afterwards is that the show lets both of them be wrong. Greg's overbearing swooping is treated as a real problem, not a lovable quirk, and Katie's stubbornness costs her two. The resolution doesn't come from one of them winning the argument. It comes from both of them figuring out what kind of relationship two adults who happen to be father and daughter are actually supposed to have. That's a more thoughtful landing than a lot of comedies would bother with, and it's the reason the finale hits as warmly as it does. This is also, and I say this with love, one of the easiest binges of the year. Ten episodes, 30 minutes a pop. You can knock this whole thing over in a single evening on the couch, and it is perfectly built for exactly that. It doesn't demand anything from you. It just invites you in, sits you down, and makes you feel good for five hours. Sometimes that is precisely what you want television to be. The frame 70 verdict for Rooster. If you're a Steve Carell fan and you enjoy his brand of humour, that very, very wholesome, warm-hearted comedy he does better than anyone, this is a definite watch. If you love a good father-daughter relationship at the center of a story and a cast that is stacked from top to bottom, it's a must-watch. It's streaming now on HBO Max, depending on availability in your location, all 10 episodes ready to go, and it's easy to knock over in one very enjoyable evening. And look, as always, this is just how the show landed for me. Entertainment is subjective, and your experience might be completely different, and that's exactly how it should be. But for my money, Rooster is one of the most comfortable, likable shows of the year, and I cannot wait for season two.