Critic Reviews

English Teacher’s impressive jokes-per-minute count delivers a steady stream of laugh-out-loud moments (a simple back-and-forth about Shrek is a contender for joke of the year). And as deliciously dense episodes whiz by, the show challenges viewers to keep up in the best way possible. Chief among English Teacher‘s hit comedy ingredients is A+ casting. .... It’s a winning comedy at the top of its class, and school will hopefully be in session for many seasons to come.

What elevates the series is a sweetness that connects the characters, and a sense amid the sitcom situations of people, young and old, grasping toward something meaningful, and sometimes coming together in what resembles a solution, a step forward.

A brilliant, warmhearted, low-stakes comedy.

It is almost unspeakably refreshing to discover the next great show. With FX’s The English Teacher, which premieres Sept. 2, the joy is twofold: The knowledge that the new comedy series is objectively, undeniably great, but also the realization—and ensuing comfort—that the sensibility and humor is directly for me.

It’s rare to see a show that knows exactly what it is with this level of confidence, right from the start. The only thing more exciting than witnessing that is seeing where it goes from here.

FX’s sharp, savage English Teacher takes a refreshingly unsentimental look at public schools — and is one of the year’s funniest new shows.

English Teacher radiates confidence from the very beginning, striking a savvy balance between funny character beats and timely observations from the increasingly politicized realm of public education. It is easily the year’s best new sitcom to date.

It is a blessedly funny straight-ahead sitcom, which at this point is the true rarity on TV. And amid its broad-strokes zeitgeist gags, it has enough quirk and complexity to capture the weirdness of adolescents and the people in charge of them.

“English Teacher” takes a while to heat up. But when you get to episode six of the new FX comedy, you’ll be hooked. There, Linda Harrison (Jenn Lyon) enters the picture and demonstrates what kind of challenges teachers face today. .... It’s a great addition to cable’s curriculum and a chance for the oh-so-talented Alvarez to show the breadth of his resume. But Jenn Lyon? She’s one to watch.

Tremendously clever and squarely focused on some of the most noxious fronts in the culture war, each episode provides plenty of fodder for audiences to thoughtfully engage with: Gun violence, drag panic, and the oppressive social order of heteronormativity are all subjects that English Teacher handles deftly in tidy 23-minute chunks. But mostly? It’s just really goddamn funny.