{"id":297851,"date":"2026-02-23T08:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T08:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/297851\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T08:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T08:33:09","slug":"steve-carell-returns-to-comedy-with-hilarious-new-hbo-show-rooster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/297851\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Carell Returns To Comedy With Hilarious New HBO Show Rooster"},"content":{"rendered":"

15 years after he walked away from NBC legendary workplace sitcom The Office<\/a>, Steve Carell is well and truly back in TV comedy with his new HBO show Rooster<\/a>. The show sees him play an overprotective father whose daughter is going through a bad breakup. His character also just happens to be a famous best-selling author of smutty novels.<\/p>\n

Although Carell\u2019s best shows and movies<\/a> tend to play to his comic strengths as an actor, over the past decade he\u2019s branched out into more dramatic TV roles. In fact, besides the two-season Netflix flop Space Force, he hasn\u2019t given a strictly comedic performance on the small screen since playing Michael Scott.<\/p>\n

Carell has always been well-suited to acting in serious dramatic roles<\/a>. His dark portrayal of depressive uncle Frank in Little Miss Sunshine was an early indication of his range as an actor. Still, we all miss him at his funniest, and so it\u2019s great to see him return to out-and-out comedy in Rooster.<\/p>\n

Rooster Will Feature Steve Carell’s Funniest Role Since The Office<\/p>\n

\"Rooster
\n Rooster star Steve CarellImage via HBO<\/p>\n

Much like Steve Carell\u2019s best moments in The Office<\/a>, we can already see from Rooster\u2019s trailer that the actor\u2019s inimitable comic timing is going to make this new HBO series into something genuinely hilarious. Out to protect his daughter after her university job is threatened by a breakup with another lecturer, Carell\u2019s character ends up working on campus himself.<\/p>\n

As if his overbearing presence in her daughter\u2019s life weren\u2019t bad enough, he\u2019s also a popular novelist whose sexually explicit stories become cause for immense embarrassment to his daughter. At the same time, he becomes an unlikely hero among male students.<\/p>\n

If this premise invokes memories of Michael Scott\u2019s Threat Level Midnight<\/a>, then Carell seems to indulge in recapturing this side of the office manager he played for seven years. His Rooster character is goofy, well-meaning, cringeworthy, and far from the most self-aware father figure. It feels like the Steve Carell of Dunder Mifflin Scranton is very much back in business.<\/p>\n

Steve Carell Has Been More Successful In Dramatic Roles During The Last Decade<\/p>\n

\"Mitch
\n Mitch Kessler feels betrayed in The Morning Show.<\/p>\n

It would be overstating things to suggest Steve Carell hasn\u2019t done TV comedy at all since The Office. Most of his small-screen roles over the past 15 years have had some comic aspects to them. However, besides Space Force, the shows he\u2019s acted in have primarily been much darker stories, ranging from satires to psychological thrillers, and emotionally charged dramas.<\/p>\n

The Morning Show, The Patient, The Four Seasons, and Mountainhead, have each had varying levels of success, but they\u2019ve all had one thing in common. These series feature Steve Carell playing a part that\u2019s more-or-less serious. He was always considered an actor capable of doing more dramatic roles<\/a>. Well, now he\u2019s gone and done them.<\/p>\n

What To Expect From Rooster On HBO<\/p>\n

\"Steve
\n Steve Carell making a weird face in Rooster<\/p>\n

Alongside Carell, Ted Lasso\u2019s Phil Dunster stars in Rooster, which is the brainchild of the soccer sitcom\u2019s co-creator, Bill Lawrence. Dunster plays the partner of the protagonist\u2019s daughter in the show, who cheats on her with a grad student at the university where they both work. As Rooster\u2019s trailer<\/a> illustrates, Dunster and Carell\u2019s characters clearly aren\u2019t going to get along.<\/p>\n

However, most of the comedy in the show will come from how embarrassing it is for Carell\u2019s character to be joining his daughter at her workplace, in order to teach classes about his wildly popular but incredibly smutty novels. It remains to be seen exactly how well Rooster\u2019s comedy will land in general, but the initial signs are certainly promising.<\/p>\n

\"rooster-poster.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Release Date<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMarch 8, 2026<\/p>\n

Network<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHBO<\/p>\n

Writers<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBill Lawrence, Matt Tarses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"15 years after he walked away from NBC legendary workplace sitcom The Office, Steve Carell is well and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-297851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}