{"id":96122,"date":"2025-10-24T20:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T20:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/96122\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T20:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T20:10:08","slug":"the-chair-company-review-a-violently-funny-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/96122\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chair Company Review \u2013 ‘A violently funny nightmare’"},"content":{"rendered":"

After suffering an embarrassing on-stage chair incident, property developer Ron Trosper (Tim Robinson) suspects he\u2019s part of a bigger corporate conspiracy, and embarks on a mission to find the truth.<\/p>\n

Episodes viewed: 7 of 8
Streaming on: NOW\/Sky Comedy<\/p>\n

It was in 1976 that Peter Finch\u2019s Howard Beale bellowed out, \u201cI\u2019m mad as hell, and I\u2019m not going to take it anymore!\u201d in Network<\/a>. Some 50 years later, that raw rage has returned in the form of William Ronald Trosper \u2014 a middle-management family man who, after falling backwards on his chair during a company-wide presentation, becomes incensed by the feeling that he\u2019s a pawn in some bigger evil scheme.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Ron is co-created and played by Tim Robinson, a comedian whose singular brand of humour is fuelled by a one-two punch of humiliation and defiance. Watch but five minutes of his sketch-comedy series I Think You Should Leave and you\u2019ll find characters flailing in common social situations (holiday parties, work meetings) and yet refusing to abandon ship, no matter how ridiculous and\/or horrifying their situation has become. It\u2019s a formula that is stretched to excruciating lengths in Robinson\u2019s feature Friendship<\/a> \u2014 about a pal-less suburban dad desperately trying to befriend his neighbour (Paul Rudd) \u2014 and with this eight-episode season he\u2019s granted even more room to play in, for both our pain and pleasure.<\/p>\n

One of the year\u2019s most bracingly hilarious shows.<\/p>\n

Cooked up with his ITYSL partner Zach Kanin, The Chair Company feels notably darker than Robinson\u2019s previous fare. Ron\u2019s suspicions of subterfuge lead him down a grim and fascinating rabbit hole peppered with oddballs, played by a delightful array of unknown and distinct character actors who nail the show\u2019s strange dialogue and violent undertones. It\u2019s also fantastically well-made, especially during its nocturnal sequences, with a nerve-shredding score and frantic, bordering-on-aggressive camerawork.<\/p>\n

At the root of the chaos, Robinson is a force. While this isn\u2019t drastically different to the desperate, eccentric roles he\u2019s played before, here he is certainly more relentless, mining a seemingly bottomless reserve of angst while maintaining an almost bewitching, stunted physicality. Ron has no reason to mirror Peter Finch\u2019s anger; there\u2019s no political or societal motivations for his prolonged fury. He\u2019s just a middle-class man looking to blame someone for a fleeting blunder. As the series rolls on, it becomes clear that Ron is, in fact, onto something. But it\u2019s his quest for vindication, over the vindication itself, that\u2019s so satisfying. Which is to say that this is one of the year\u2019s most bracingly hilarious shows, by a long way.<\/p>\n

An incendiary, violently funny nightmare, The Chair Company gifts us Tim Robinson at the top of his strange, single-player game. There is nobody doing what he does. And we, thankfully, have to live with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After suffering an embarrassing on-stage chair incident, property developer Ron Trosper (Tim Robinson) suspects he\u2019s part of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-96122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}