REVIEW: ‘The Chair Company’ Is A Miracle

The comedy of Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin is not for everyone. That sentiment continues in the I Think You Should Leave creators’ latest series, The Chair Company. Like their prior work, HBO‘s new series accentuates discomfort and surrealism to the point that a large swath of audiences will be turned off entirely. For those attuned to the hyper-specific wavelength Robinson and Kanin are operating on, The Chair Company is a miracle. A layered, unpredictable, and hilarious show, nothing in the 2025 television landscape has captivated me quite like this delirious trip down the rabbit hole. 

William ‘Ron’ Trosper (Tim Robinson) has it all. He has an entrepreneurial wife (Lake Bell) who supports him, children who love him, and the opportunity to build a mall that will cement his creative legacy. After an embarrassing incident at work – it’s best to go in blind, not knowing the specifics – Ron’s world starts to crash down around him. Ron goes deep into the heart of a conspiracy surrounding a mysterious chair company known as Tecca. As he gets closer to the truth, he risks losing everything, including his sanity. 

Known for his wildly over-the-top, cartoony characters, Tim Robinson actually starts as the straight man with his performance. Although Ron seems to have something going on beneath the surface, he initially presents as a regular family man. This conceit allows Robinson’s performance to slowly go off the rails, eventually becoming thoroughly unhinged by the end of its 8-episode run. As an approach, it’s remarkably successful, letting the unbelievable world around Ron shine first and foremost.

The Chair Company does a fine job of conveying the crushing, fluorescent-lit purgatory of working at an office.

And what a ridiculous world it is! Ron’s workplace is surrounded by odd characters, like his bro-y, irritable boss Jeff (Lou Diamond Phillips), soft-spoken but shady co-worker Douglas (Jim Downey), and anxious assistant Jamie (Glo Tavarez). The Chair Company does a fine job of conveying the crushing, fluorescent-lit purgatory of working at an office and how suffocating that can be. When Ron ventures out to chase the leads on Tecca, that’s when The Chair Company truly opens up. 

At no moment is it ever really clear where Ron’s investigation is heading. The one constant is the foul-mouthed Mike Santini, played wonderfully by the relative unknown Joseph Tudisco. Outside of that dynamic, The Chair Company leads its audience through shadowy abandoned offices, dive bars, dingy hoarders’ homes, and much, much more, each tangent more strange and compelling than the last. Recurring motifs like a giant red ball and Eastern European insects keep the audience engaged, formulating their own theories and getting sucked into the mystery, much in the same way Ron is.

What’s most striking about The Chair Company is how interesting it is as a thriller. Directors Andrew DeYoung (Friendship) and Aaron Schimberg (A Different Man) bring an accomplished cinematic lens to the proceedings. As downright silly as Ron’s detective work is, The Chair Company almost plays it straight; each step closer to Tecca feels like a major victory, and each major reveal hits harder than the last. It’s funny that in a television landscape full of dark thrillers, it’s a surreal comedy that comes closest to hitting the compulsively watchable highs of one of HBO’s greatest productions – the perfect first season of True Detective. 

As a comedy, The Chair Company hits the mark perfectly.

Of course, The Chair Company is still a comedy, and as a comedy, it hits the mark perfectly. The humor of the series operates in two modes: cringeworthy disbelief at the lengths Ron is going to and introducing a strange bit, then elaborating on it to hilariously over-the-top levels. Robinson and Kanin nail both of these aspects, particularly the latter.

The Chair Company will beat a dead horse until it finds new life, with certain bits like an ill-advised “mistakes party” at work, a seriously out-there shirt salesman, and a bar brawl that spirals out of control, some of the funniest things I’ve seen in a television show. It’s all hits, no misses here for fans of Robinson and Kanin’s comedy.

I’d be remiss not to mention that part of what makes The Chair Company such a one-of-a-kind program is in its subtle yet searing social commentary. Of course, the obvious commentary is the pipeline to conspiracy theories that specifically older males tend to fall into. Yes, the conspiracies that Ron follows aren’t alt-right or even necessarily political or insidious, but it’s no less disturbing to see Ron put most of his life on the back burner to pursue his hunches. 

Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin examine the soul-crushing nature of corporate office work.

Moreover, Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin are also interested in examining the soul-crushing nature of corporate office work. Perhaps the biggest insight they have is the shut-off nature many men adopt in today’s society. Ron has suppressed his dreams and even his feelings to live a “proper” life, leaving him isolated.

This speaks to the so-called “male loneliness epidemic” that is often self-imposed by men who are unconsciously sending themselves into autopilot, creating a sort of resentment towards others for the lives they’ve put themselves in. The Chair Company doesn’t have the answers, yet the fact that it can open the conversation on an uncomfortable topic and integrate it into the series’ DNA is commendable. 

By the time all is said and done, The Chair Company is a perfect storm of surrealist comedy, pulse-pounding thriller, and commentary on the lives of sad-sack men who feel stuck in their lives. It hits all these notes without missing a beat, resulting in, without a doubt, the most engrossing television experience of 2025. The fact that there’s a season 2 already announced is as exciting as it is worrying. After all, how does one top what’s already golden? If anyone can find a way, it’s Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin.

All episodes of The Chair Company Season 1 are now streaming on HBO Max.