It’s time to declare this year’s best new comedy: The English Teacher

It’s October, so I feel confident making this critic’s call: the best new comedy of 2024 is English Teacher. Quick-witted, wholly contemporary, and successfully straddling the line between character-driven humour and sitcom absurdity, each episode of this Disney+ series is a succinct 21 minutes. That whole debate about comedies that are not actually comedies – hello to The Bear and its deep wells of trauma – does not apply here. We got visual gags. We got loopy banter. We got punchlines. And a bunch more.

As played by the show’s creator, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Evan Marquez is the titular educator at Morrison-Hensley High School, a public school in the suburbs of Austin, Texas. He’s gay and it’s a comparatively progressive city, but this is Texas, the suburbs are conservative, and it’s an election year. English Teacher doesn’t sidle up to America’s fractious issues, trying to surreptitiously joke about them to defuse them. It names and games them, personalising the divisions and being frank about the preposterous outcomes.

Brian Jordan Alvarez in English Teacher: a life full of contradictions.Credit: Disney+

The first five minutes alone have a giddy energy that reveals the everyday realities of living in a 24/7 culture wars country. “I had to teach both sides of the Spanish Inquisition,” notes Evan’s best friend, history teacher Gwen Sanders (Stephanie Koenig), which he tops with the concerns expressed by parents over a book with “lewd content”. It was The Great Gatsby. As with the educators at the Philadelphia primary school in Abbott Elementary (which was the best new comedy of 2022), teaching is a job of trying circumstances, dubious cafeteria food, and sheer bewilderment.

The clarity that drives the writing is clear from the start. Evan’s colleague, gym teacher and sports coach Markie Hillridge (Sean Patton) is a burly Libertarian susceptible to podcasts who casually says wild stuff. As soon as you think he’s buffoonish comic relief, an easy out for Evan to righteously dunk on, the character starts surprising you. Markie is thoughtful when least expected, makes valid points, and has a down-to-earth outlook that makes sense when Evan is quick, to the faculty’s dismay, to make a speech.

As irreverent as it is, the show’s underpinning is to examine whether Evan can be true to a life full of trying contradictions. He believes teaching is a noble career, for example, but the students and their camera phones sometimes freak him out. Evan wants to make a difference, but his plans are messy and he has a habit of using questionable tactics to get his way. An episode centred on firearms – naturally, Markie runs the school’s gun club for students – starts with the ever-present spectre of school shootings and then combines gun control arguments and screw loose escalation.

When Evan tries to galvanise the students they’re sanguine. They know systematic change isn’t possible, that’s why they’ve been doing active-shooter drills since kindergarten. The show has fun with the teenagers, but it never fully stereotypes them, whether it’s the football players or the LGBTQ club. After just a few episodes, the personalities of Evan’s 11th grade English class are distinct and comically contributing (I laughed out loud when Evan learnt a student has self-diagnosed “asymptomatic Tourette’s”).

Brian Jordan Alvarez has had a steady television career, with supporting roles on the Will & Grace reboot and Jane the Virgin, but he elevated his career with viral characters he debuted on Instagram and TikTok. He has a comic’s instincts – in another life Evan could have ended up selling paper on The Office – and a character actor’s feel for foibles. Watching him read aloud from bad student essays about The Red Badge of Courage is my safe space.

That Alvarez got English Teacher made without a star attached is testament to the show’s quick hooks. It was commissioned by Disney’s FX, an American cable television channel, which thankfully gives Alvarez leeway on language, concepts, and sexuality. Evan doesn’t have to be a chaste gay character, and the show is frank about his sex life, especially because it reflects his misreading of people. He hooks up with former boyfriend, Malcolm (Jordan Firstman), but denies they’re back together, then thoroughly confuses a new gay colleague, Harry (Langston Kerman).

The main issue I have with the series is that the first season is just eight episodes long, which suggests FX gave it a condensed trial. It means that supporting parts can drift in and out of focus, while some promising plotlines are introduced and then left parked for season two. English Teacher obviously has room to grow, but it makes a terrific entrance and reminds us that the comedy is television’s most pliable genre. I’m giving it an A-minus.

English Teacher streams on Disney+

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