The Chair is often funny, but it’s several steps above a typical sit-com. Oh manages to embody Ji-Yoon with exactly the right mashup of frustration and optimism, hope and despair. And, despite it all, she’s disarmingly funny.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.5/10 | Aug 25, 2022

Peet and her team have developed a role worthy of Sandra Oh's brilliance. Her character is warm and human and Oh gets to be purely funny. It is a joy to watch and joy has been pretty thin on the ground lately.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 15, 2022

The Chair makes for a quick binge with a total run time of three hours and a wonderful leading performance from actress Sandra Oh.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 4, 2022

Tightly written and expertly cast, The Chair deftly weaves absurdist comedy gold from what happens when a calling and a profession morphs into an industry where neither progress nor passion can blossom.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Feb 23, 2022

Peet and Wyman manage to give shape to that unique world without turning it into an empty metaphor for an era. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jan 11, 2022

The Chair is a heartfelt series, entertaining and insightful about the challenges facing academics as they fight to save their departments, their subjects, and themselves.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2021

The Chair is not quite what you expect it to be. It's particularly unwilling to give us complete tragedy, or any true sense of hopeful success. It's somewhere else, in the middle, not quite ambivalent but full of exacting perceptiveness.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2021

It's a beach read that perhaps could have been a richer novel.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 15, 2021

It's a comedy, but it's a stressful one, and there is a lot going on for a short six-episode season (each episode is only half an hour), but Oh manages to successfully juggle all those storylines in the air and hold The Chair together.

Full Review | Oct 12, 2021

It tackles way too much, especially in the time allotted. It's an hour-long show that has been compressed into 30 minutes. It's exhausting.

Full Review | Sep 28, 2021

The Chair has its moments. But if it was any longer, it may have been enough to turn people off.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 18, 2021

It's a fascinating glimpse into Korean culture (though Oh herself is Canadian, both her parents are Korean), and is in sharp contrast to the on-screen academic world, which is populated by some very familiar figures.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 16, 2021

If you have an academic background, this show is for you. If you are living in America with panic over Critical Race Theory, this is for you. If you're smart and have a honed sense of humor, this is for you.

Full Review | Sep 14, 2021

It may be that students in American universities today have simplistic, pious ideas about race and gender, but the examples we meet in this series are hardly better than cartoons.

Full Review | Sep 10, 2021

This series is a little slow but oh that Sandra Oh. I would watch her in anything and she would be great.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Sep 8, 2021

Oh's comedic chops ensure Ji-Yoon's bravado is believable, and as the problems pile up, the funnier Ji-Yoon becomes. In a year full of strong female roles on screen, Oh has eclipsed them all.

Full Review | Sep 3, 2021

Ultimately, the comedy makes The Chair an enjoyable watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 3, 2021

[The Chair] feels like a real attempt to grapple with the problems of contemporary academia, and the humanities in particular, by someone who has felt invested in them.

Full Review | Sep 3, 2021

Someone involved with writing the show has clearly spent a lot of time on campus recently and it has paid off in some really incisive humor about the absurdities of campus life.

Full Review | Sep 2, 2021

The Chair gets an easy A.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 2, 2021