A 2025 Comedy Series With A 100% Rotten Tomatoes Score Is Taking Over HBO Max's Charts

Cringe comedy is ... a particular and special niche genre, and few people are doing it better than Tim Robinson, whose new original series on HBO is crushing streaming charts and earning rave reviews from critics. 

Created by Robinson and his frequent collaborator Zach Kanin, the eight-episode series tackles a subject familiar to anyone who likes Robinson's body of work (which we'll circle back to later): a guy gets embarrassed in front of a crowd and, instead of just accepting it, doubles and triples down to prove that he wasn't somehow "wrong." Not only is FlixPatrol reporting that "The Chair Company" is crushing HBO Max's charts, but over on Rotten Tomatoes, the series boasts an incredible 100% rating with a critical consensus that declares, "Tim Robinson's volcanic comedic ethos finds an ideal outlet in 'The Chair Company,' a descent into paranoia that finds huge laughs in deeply uncomfortable places."

Individual critics really liked the series too! Looper's sister site /Film ran a review by chief film critic Chris Evangelista, where he soundly praised the series by concluding, "What if an 'I Think You Should Leave' character suddenly stumbled into a film like 'The Parallax View' or 'Three Days of the Condor?' It might look something like 'The Chair Company.'" Angie Han agreed at The Hollywood Reporter, musing, "As with the rest of Robinson's oeuvre, it's a purposely uncomfortable experience, as likely to make you squirm as laugh. But those already turned onto his brand of weirdness are in for a bracing ride." Brian Tallerico, writing for RogerEbert.com, might have the funniest review: "It's a show that plays alternately like a mystery and a study of a man going insane. It might be both." So what is "The Chair Company" about, really?

In the first episode of "The Chair Company" — helmed by director Andrew DeYoung, who recently worked with Tim Robinson on the wonderfully bizarre comedy feature "Friendship" — we meet Ron Trosper (Robinson), an affable if somewhat irritable guy who's out to dinner with his wife Barb (Lake Bell) and kids Natalie and Seth (Sophia Lillis and Will Price) and who's celebrating a huge new development that he's leading at his company Fisher Robay. (The company is building a new mall, leading to a classically weird Robinson-esque interaction with the server, who says she's never been to a mall even as Ron insists that she has.) At work, Ron takes part in a massive, company-wide presentation that puts him front and center as people praise his leadership ... only for his chair to break spectacularly in front of a huge crowd.

Ron is, to put it lightly, destroyed by this incident and develops an obsession with the company that made the chair, Tecca, trying to complain to them and hitting dead ends at every turn. (One of the funniest moments in the entire episode is when Ron proudly finds a customer service email, only for his missive to bounce back, which shakes the man to his very core.) Because this is a Robinson project, there's a solid chance that Ron will end up being partly correct about a potential conspiracy theory involving Tecca's chairs, but there's an even better chance that he'll drive everybody absolutely bonkers and alienate them throughout the show as he keeps being interminably weird about a broken chair.

If the first episode of "The Chair Company" sounds uncomfortable and cringeworthy, that's sort of the point. Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin, as we mentioned, are know for their offbeat, often utterly bizarre, and occasionally mortifying brand of cringe comedy, which is most prominently on display inn their Netflix series "I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson." The show, which has won three Emmys as of this writing — two for Robinson as a performer and one for the overall show as a short form comedy series — puts Robinson and other comedy geniuses, like his real-life best friend Sam Richardson, in a series of awkward and weird situations and lets them muddle through as poorly as possible. Frankly, the show's very first sketch, where Robinson's character "pulls" a door that says "push" and then rips it off its hinges desperately trying to prove it goes "both ways," is pretty indicative of the show's overall feel.

There are, to be clear, some people who really can't stand Robinson or "I Think You Should Leave," and that is okay! It's a very specific and very odd show, and it's definitely not going to be everybody's cup of tea. If you're a Robinson diehard, though, "The Chair Company" will definitely deliver the awkward laughs you're looking for, and with Robinson in the lead role, you'll get plenty of his incredibly and wonderfully strange line deliveries and facial expressions (the guy makes the mere act of squinting hysterical, somehow). If you need a primer, "I Think You Should Leave," which spans three short seasons so far, is on Netflix ... but "The Chair Company" is streaming on HBO Max now, and new episodes drop on Sunday nights at 10 P.M.