The Chair

— “The Chair” is inhabited characters who are eerily familiar, but I spent a lifetime adjacent to academics, just far enough from their world to be able to see the good, the bad, and the laughable. In a way, Netflix’s series has a similar perspective. Sandra Oh is at the reins, somewhat unsuccessfully trying to wrangle the English department faculty into the 21st century at a smaller, upper-tier, Ivy-esque institution. From the faculty point of view, administrators are mostly seen as bureaucrats harming the core mission by focusing on business practices over curriculum, but the faculty has flaws too—tensions between up-and-coming academic stars and tenured deadwood, and issues of racism and sexism permeate the show. Viewers are lucky enough to be able to see the absurdity inherent in some of the situations, and the series is smart enough to focus on the characters' flaws instead of painting the depicted professors as saints with PhDs. I enjoyed watching all six of the 30-minutes episodes. [Netflix streaming.]

---

[2021. 6 episodes in one Season. 30 min./episode. Created by Amanda Peet and Annie Wyman. Starring Sandra Oh, Jay Duplass, Holland Taylor, Bob Balaban, Nana Mensah, and David Morse.]
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/aug/20/the-chair-review-sandra-oh-netflix-university-satire-comedy