Steve Corell is a hapless writing teacher at a small New England college in the new HBO comedy series Rooster.

His daughter teaches there, too, and she's the subject of campus gossip because her husband, also a teacher, just dumped her for a student.

The show's got a great cast, including Danielle Deadweiler and John C. McGinley,

and one of its creators is Bill Lawrence of Scrubs, Shrinking, and Ted Lassow. I'm Linda Holmes.

And I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about Rooster on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

Joining us today is Kristen Meinser. She co-hosts the Nightly a Bedtime podcast for pop culture lovers. Hey, Kristen, welcome back.

Hey, Glenn. Hey, Linda. Great to have you. In Rooster, Steve Carell plays Greg, a writer of pulpy crime novels, who gets pressured into teaching at the college where his daughter Katie teaches art history. She's played by Charlie Clive.

She's just been dumped by her husband Archie, played by Phil Dunster. He's a narcissistic historian who's having an affair with a student named Sunny. She's played by Lawrence I. Daniel Deadweiler is

Dylan, another writing teacher with whom Greg has lots of chemistry, and John C. McGinley is the

college president. The show's co-created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarsus. I've already listed Lawrence's history, but you should know that Tarsus was the showrunner on Alex Inc. That show where Zach Raff was a podcaster, remember that? Linda, we've seen the first six episodes out of 10. What did you think a rooster?

Yeah, I really liked this. It's not as good as shrinking, but it reminds me a lot of shrinking. It is about a bunch of people, most of whom do very foolish things at times, but are basically decent and are basically trying. You mentioned Matt Tarsis and made this sort of obligatory dig at Alex Inc. But I don't see Alex

Inc in this at all. What I see is shrinking and I see one of the other things that Matt Tarsus worked on in the past, which is my very beloved sports night. And there are people who get very impatient with shows where people are basically nice and basically trying, but it is my sweet spot.

Shrinking is probably my favorite show right now as far as what I think it is trying not only

to do as a comedy, but also kind of do in the world.

I think I really welcome to this.

I was afraid at first, obviously, you put something on a college campus. You're going to get like the older, he's a novelist who's like a writer in residence. So he's not a traditional college professor at all. But you get that and you feel like is this going to be like humorless feminists who don't want you to say mankind. That is not what this is,

right? He does get himself in trouble a lot, but the show to me is very clear that those are his

missteps. And it does not really villainize the students. It recognizes, I think, the generation

gap and some of the different expectations without making the students bad or, you know, wrong to be challenging him on certain things. I appreciated that a lot. Basically, this really worked well for me. Like I said, I'm not going to say it's as good as shrinking, but that's an extremely high bar. I did enjoy it quite a lot. And I like Steve Carrell in this mode. So. All right. Kristen, what you think? I agree with a lot of what Linda is saying here. It is like shrinking in a lot of ways.

We have a dad. her on this mode. So. All right. Kristen, what you think? I agree with a lot of what Linda is saying here.

It is like shrinking in a lot of ways.

We have a dad.

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