English Teacher remembers comedies are supposed to be funny.
For a while there, it felt like sitcoms got scared of their own jokes. Every workplace comedy suddenly started walking on eggshells — terrified of saying the wrong thing, offending the wrong person, or accidentally wandering into discourse hell online. Which is why English Teacher feels so refreshing.
And this thing is genuinely funny. Not background noise funny. Actual laugh-out-loud funny.
Set inside a high school where every staff meeting feels one accidental comment away from an HR complaint, the show follows Evan Marquez, a gay English teacher trying to survive modern school culture alongside a faculty full of teachers, administrators, and coaches hiding their own brand of dysfunction.
Brian Jordan Alvarez feels like a genuine breakout here. He plays Evan with this perfect cocktail of insecurity, passive aggression, self-awareness, and desperation to be liked. The supporting cast is equally sharp — one of those rare ensemble comedies where if one storyline isn't landing, somebody else immediately grabs the wheel and keeps the episode moving.
The writing runs headfirst into topics most modern comedies seem to fumble: identity politics, generational disconnects, progressive language policing, awkward sexuality, school bureaucracy. Over the course of the season, Evan and the faculty keep stumbling into situations that should be career-enders: parent complaints, identity-politics minefields, school assemblies going catastrophically sideways.
But unlike most modern comedies, English Teacher isn't trying to teach you a lesson. It just sits with the awkwardness, lets everyone be a little wrong, and trusts you to figure out what's funny about it.
The show moves fast, too. Thirty-minute episodes, rapid-fire jokes, and an ensemble full of scene-stealers make the whole thing ridiculously easy to burn through. Most importantly, the show feels slightly dangerous again — not because it's trying to offend people, but because it remembers comedy works best when nobody's safe from the joke.
It's edgy, oddly wholesome — and one of the better new comedies to show up in a while. Watch it.
The Rundown
Performances
The chemistry of the entire cast feels like they've been doing this for ten years already, and they all bring their own heat. Brian Jordan Alvarez and Stephanie Koenig are the anchors. Sean Patton's permanently fired-up Coach Moretti delivers one-liners that'll make you spit out your Cheerios, while Enrico Colantoni's exhausted principal and Carmen Christopher's strange stoner teacher make the school feel like a zoo being run by the animals.
What You Come Here For
Rapid-fire jokes, workplace dysfunction, and teachers trying to survive modern teenagers without getting fired. The show takes the gloves off when it comes to awkward social territory.
Best Episode
"School Assembly" (S1E5) — a perfect escalation episode where every attempt to avoid offending somebody creates an even bigger disaster.
Weak Spots
The episodes can occasionally start to blur together once the formula settles in.
Pair With
Abbott Elementary, The Other Two, Veep.
Included In
What Our
Ratings Mean
Learn More →Worth Your Time: Now we're talking. These are the shows you recommend to friends, bring up at dinner, and accidentally binge until 2AM. High 8s start flirting with greatness.
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Irma Vep
One of the strangest and most hypnotic shows in recent memory — the kind you immediately text your artsy friend about.