Why is there such a buzz about..?
The Chair (Netflix)
In just six half-hour episodes, this clever campus comedy tackles a range of issues currently afflicting universities – ‘cancel culture’, obnoxiously selfrighteous students, lack of diversity among academic staff – and does so with such a lightness of touch that we don’t feel as if we’re being lectured to.
Sandra Oh (left) plays Dr Ji-Yoon Kim, the first woman chair of the English department at Pembroke University, an American liberalarts college whose best days are behind it. The most popular lecturer, Dr Yaz McKay (Nana Mensah), is a younger black woman who teaches Moby-Dick in a way that the students enjoy, while the department’s Chaucer expert, Professor Joan Hambling (Holland Taylor), has poorly attended lectures. ‘This is one of the few professions where you get more respect as you get older,’ Joan says, but, sadly, she’s wrong.
Then, when a colleague does a Nazi salute in a lecture on fascism, he is accused by insufferable undergraduates of being a fascist himself. This is witty, entertaining, leaves you wanting more and can be enjoyed by snowflake students and past-it professors alike.