English Teacher review – promising high school comedy has work to do

Evan Marquez, the idealistic educator played by Brian Jordan Alvarez in his new FX series English Teacher, is a far cry from the comedian’s distinctively online characters. Since 2020, the actor (Special, Grace and Frankie, the Will & Grace reboot) and longtime producer of queer comedy found a wider audience through a sort of bizarro online drag. His delightfully off-kilter menagerie of TikTok characters – a rich southern aunt, a bald man with a one-month Airbnb rental and a dream, the large-mouthed TJ Mack, extolling the virtues of Sitting in unnervingly catchy fashion – all have exaggerated face filters, implacable accents and outsized personalities. Evan Marquez, by contrast, is somewhat of a normie – a high-school English teacher in Austin, Texas, who looks and talks like Alvarez and just wants to do a good job.

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It’s a surprising, risky move, in a promising, if slight, series full of them. For of course, what constitutes doing and keeping a “good job” as a gay teacher in a southern school, dealing with burned out colleagues, helicopter parents and very online students, is up for interpretation. The eight-part series, created and often written and directed by Alvarez, is at its best when probing different points of view, then drily undercutting expected sympathies. And in particular, when a gay teacher often playing the straight, righteous man to teenagers’ outrageous schemes and black-and-white thinking, is just as much wrong as he is right.

Evan is often in the right; in a sharper way than fellow public-school comedy Abbott Elementary, English Teacher is attuned to how education has become an increasingly fraught and absurd political battleground. Evan begins the series under investigation, after a parent reported that their kid saw him kiss another man – his former colleague and on-and-off boyfriend Malcolm (Jordan Firstman) – at school. Evan correctly points out that this specific parent is probably reacting to the fact that her son is gay, but perpetually exhausted Principal Moretti (Enrico Colantoni) has a school board to contend with and, as he puts it episodes later, “hell hath no wrath like a concerned parent.” (True.)

Principal Moretti is one of several unlikely and often unhelpful allies to Evan who are, unfortunately, generally funnier and more interesting than him. Among them: Gwen (series standout Stephanie Koenig), Evan’s best friend, a history teacher as concerned with topping the school’s illicit Discord “hot teacher” list as with anything else; Rick (Carmen Christopher), a hapless, stoner guidance counselor and would-be entrepreneur; and most winsomely, football coach Markie Hillridge (Sean Patton), a very straight guy’s guy with a heart of gold and foot usually in mouth (he loves and accepts Evan but also calls him “Fruit Loop”).

In another show, Markie could be a grating, one-note, walking stereotype (in the first episode, he almost is). But English Teacher, with writing by Alvarez, Koenig, Dave King, Jake Bender and Zach Dunn, sagely allows for each character, especially the endearing Markie, to surprise with their best and worst potential, often at the same time. The standout fourth episode finds Evan and Markie at odds over the latter’s “firearm safety” club; another finds them both supporting the “drag” of the football boys’ powderpuff performance, though for different reasons.

The consistent dodges with relatively low stakes recall HBO’s superior Somebody Somewhere , another Heartland-set comedy of ordinary misfits finding themselves that played against stereotypes. With episodes just skimming 20 minutes, English Teacher is an easily digestible, pleasant and at times genuinely funny watch (such as when students believably submit elaborate penis drawings to a mascot competition). It’s also a scant one; the six episodes made available for review barely transcend the feeling of an auspicious prototype, leaving threads dangling, scenes cut short and too much unsaid. There are tantalizing glimpses of the characters outside of school – Gwen’s unemployed boyfriend, a hang by her unfinished pool, Evan’s worn-in chemistry with the free-spirited and unfiltered Malcolm – not to mention a few memorably intimidating students. But these sketches struggle to coalesce into a real sense of place or person, even as the actors’ dialogue and rapid crosstalk settles into something more natural after the rather mannered first episode.

Part of the issue is that Alvarez, without an accent or even much of a bit, struggles to compel as the titular character; his Evan is more strained and inscrutable than harried and charming, leaving a hole in the center of the show. We don’t know much about him, other than he believes himself to be principled, cares about his abs and keeps getting lured back in by Malcolm despite his feelings for fellow teacher Harry (Langston Kerman), who inexplicably disappears in the back half of the preview episodes. Intentional or not, the series clicks most when Evan is not the central gravity of a scene.

Still, for all its handling of today’s (unfortunately) hot-button topics (non-binary people, book bans, rogue school boards, “wokeness”), English Teacher is a breeze – a tricky mix of wit, silly humor and heart with plenty of potential. For now, it gets a passing grade, with a request for more study and, hopefully, a bright future.

• English Teacher starts on FX and Hulu on 2 September in the US and on UK on Disney+ soon