At one point in Will Ferrell’s new golf comedy series “The Hawk,” the once-promising player Lonnie Hawkins (Ferrell), whose nickname lends the show its title, explains to his inexperienced new caddie Sam (Fortune Feimster) the difference between a hot streak and a run. A hot streak is exciting, but doesn’t last as long as a run, which is more sustained and satisfying. He turns to a scatological metaphor to get his point across, but it’s still instructive — and unavoidably brings to mind elements of Ferrell’s storied comedy career. Those passages where he’s scored multiple hits (and/or paydays) in a row are more like a hot streak. His movies with Adam McKay, encompassing an enviable series of classic comedies “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights,” “Step Brothers” and “The Other Guys,” on the other hand, are a legendary run.
“The Hawk” resembles a lot of material from one of Ferrell’s hot streaks, not least because it doesn’t involve McKay; their creative partnership busted up a few years ago. At the same time, it’s obviously not an empty for-hire gig; Ferrell co-created the series with other frequent collaborators he met at “Saturday Night Live,” Harper Steele and Chris Henchy, and it has funny supporting roles for “SNL” pals like Molly Shannon (as Lonnie’s not-quite-ex-wife Stacy) and Chris Parnell (as his glad-handing, ineffectual sworn enemy). The show also bears more than a passing resemblance to “Talladega Nights,” which is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary. In that film, Ferrell played a cocky NASCAR driver plagued by daddy issues.
Lonnie Hawkins isn’t the same degree of arrogant masculine doofus as car-driving Ricky Bobby, and this time he’s the one providing the daddy issues for his son — Lance (Jimmy Tatro), also a pro golfer. But the Hawk is another breed of Ferrell’s beloved Dopey American Men, here luxuriating in more of an affable, boomer-coded selfishness (despite Ferrell’s Gen-X affiliation in his actual age) as he pursues a comeback in parallel with Lance’s seemingly more strict approach to ascending in the same sport as his freewheeling old man.
Ferrell does mix up his approach to this character: Lonnie has a mild bad-boy streak on the green, and there are references to his truly foolish handling of money — he travels everywhere in a massive and well-stocked RV, even if this means camping out in Walmart parking lots for days at a time — but he’s not an endlessly aggressive alpha. (One cute running gag is how while Stacy expresses nonstop, profane loathing for the Hawk, he is still genuinely attracted to her even when they’re at their most adversarial.) He’s fueled by an earnest longing for triumph in his sport of choice, despite not seeming quite disciplined enough to make it happen on his own. He’s a bit like a Ferrell take on Kevin Costner’s charming layabout from “Tin Cup,” intentionally stripped of the allowances we made for a handsome movie star.
Yet there are other allowances made for a well-liked comedian — and much of what makes Ferrell’s comedy so endearing is present and accounted for in “The Hawk.” Like his contemporary Adam Sandler, Ferrell hires a lot of his friends for his various projects; unlike Sandler, most of Ferrell’s friends are genuinely funny. He also seems perpetually engaged with how he might expand beyond his usual circle, hence the presence of newer faces like Tatro and Feimster. He clearly wants an environment where every character and subplot, not just his own shtick, feeds into the comedy. Also harkening back to his best work, which McKay imbued with increasingly sophisticated filmmaking alongside all the improv: The show’s high-contrast visual template is set by a pair of episodes directed by David Gordon Green, whose CV includes “Pineapple Express” and, perhaps more relevant, the Ferrell-produced TV series “Eastbound and Down,” another better project that this one resembles. (Green also closes out the season with the final two episodes.)
Everything seems to be in place for Ferrell’s first full-on mainstream comedy series to stand with, if not his absolute best satirical work, something from the strong second tier, like the competition-themed film comedies “Blades of Glory” or “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.” So why is “The Hawk” more of a likable, mildly amusing lark than a genuine laugh riot? Some of it may be that classic streaming problem where a story that could very obviously support a 105-minute feature has been strung out to well over twice that length (though at least the 10 individual episodes are punchy enough in their sub-30-minute runtimes).
But while a funnier feature could have probably been carved out here, the bigger problem is that “The Hawk” lacks a crucial element of surprise. Many of Ferrell’s comedies follow well-established sports-movie trajectories, but spring enough left-field inventions in the moment that they sometimes feel genuinely improvisatory, in the best way. By comparison, “The Hawk” often feels tediously scripted — even underwritten. The punchlines don’t punch very hard, and the kind of offhand details and dialogue that often fills out Ferrell’s best movies are more scattershot here. Shannon fares among the best as the vengeful Stacy, constantly hawking a golf-themed alcohol-spiked tea called Teed Off. And once in a while the show will pop off a sight gag so funny (like one later-episode bit involving a pickle jar) that it throws the dead space into even sharper relief.
Even at its weakest, “The Hawk” is plenty watchable — and as it goes on, there are stronger passages of comedy in the back half that feel more like Ferrell’s old self emerging alongside Lonnie’s. A Las Vegas-set episode later in the season is particularly funny, in large part because it allows Ferrell, Shannon, Tatro and a number of clutch supporting players like David Hornsby (slyly scoring laughs as Stacy’s gentle paramour Radford) to bump up against each other rather than engaging in separate, occasionally intersecting storylines. Much of the series, though, feels like its usually well-synced creators behind and in front of the camera are waiting for greater inspiration to strike before they’re forced to move on to the next scene. A new classic run for Ferrell will have to wait.
“The Hawk” is now streaming on Netflix.