Subscriber to “The Chair” on Netflix: human comedy on American campus – Télérama.fr

The new director of the literature department of a prestigious American college must manage the growing gap between her students and aging teachers. A fine, funny and hitting miniseries.

After Dear White People, a twirling comedy on the evolution of race and gender issues on an American campus, Netflix offers a new series that takes a subtle, non-Manichaeistic look at a world in the throes of revolution. The Chair (Director in VF), created by actress Amanda Peet, manages to combine, in just six short thirty-minute episodes, a moving portrait of a woman, a thwarted romance and a reflection on the archaisms and excesses of American universities. It features Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh), a brilliant professor at the (fictional) Pembroke University, elected head of the literature department with one goal: to modernize it. Composed mainly of old and white men, it corresponds less and less to “woke” students determined not to let anything go. The situation becomes explosive when Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass), his colleague and best friend, gives a Nazi salute during one of his lessons dedicated to the absurd …

Director is not a thesis series. It is above all an endearing human comedy, whose characters are finely drawn and perfectly embodied. She exploits a familiar universe but multiplies fresh ideas, in small touches, by wearing an amused, tender and cowardly look at the teachers in their seventies, or by portraying the complex relationship between Ji-Yoon, a single mother, and her adopted daughter. , of Mexican origin. Before considering how the world is going, she observes these teachers in their privacy and, thanks to fine, funny and moving dialogues, never ceases to remind us of their intelligence. Even in its more purely comic sequences – especially those of the brilliant Holland Taylor, whose character as a teacher refusing to be shelved deserves a series in its own right -, The Chair always remains delicate, takes care of his language, quotes poets, and refuses any short cut.