HBO’s Rooster is an acting masterclass, with tour-de-force performances from Steve Carrell, Phil Dunster, Danielle Deadwyler, John C. McGinley, and more. It’s at once charming, incisive, and laugh-out-loud funny.

It’s the kind of show that doesn’t knock your socks off​, but its amiable wit is more than welcome.

With Lawrence vets John C. McGinley and Phil Dunster also turning out reliably bizarre and antagonistic performances, Rooster has more working parts than broken ones to keep the HBO Max comedy moving.

Mostly, though, Archie’s indiscretion serves as a conduit to character comedy about well-meaning screw-ups trying to make good. The ensemble is large and charming. .... The only remarkable thing about Rooster, really, is that it treats a campus rocked by teacher-student sex as just another backdrop.

If you’ve never seen Carell in anything, you will find Rooster charming and quite funny. Even if you have, you could put this series on in the background of whatever else you’re doing, and it’s perfectly pleasant. But it could be so much more if the writers weren’t clearly trying to create another Ted Lasso, with which Rooster shares a writer.

Aside from the occasional choice gag, its geniality dampens its silliness.

Unfortunately, “Rooster” is full of predictable characters and circumstances, adding up to a lackluster narrative.