--- title: 'Vladimir' and 'Rooster' Try to Make Campus Sex Funny Again description: Two new TV comedies meet the post-post-#MeToo moment with surprising levity—but still feel a bit dated. canonical: https://time.com/7382296/vladimir-rooster-review/ author: Judy Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-03-05T17:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-19T11:50:11.912Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Can Sex on College Campuses Be Funny Again? og:description: Netflix's 'Vladimir' and HBO's 'Rooster' meet the post-post-#MeToo moment with levity—but still feel a bit dated og:url: https://time.com/7382296/vladimir-rooster-review/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf40e9b2ce8e0d60c/69b048a6fa0d7153e3728c7c/vladimir-rooster.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: vladimir-rooster og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Can Sex on College Campuses Be Funny Again? twitter:description: Netflix's 'Vladimir' and HBO's 'Rooster' meet the post-post-#MeToo moment with levity—but still feel a bit dated twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf40e9b2ce8e0d60c/69b048a6fa0d7153e3728c7c/vladimir-rooster.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # Two New Comedies Try to Make Sex on Campus Funny Again > Sponsored content. 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Mar 5, 2026 5:00 PM UTC  Carell and Clive in Rooster; Weisz and Woodall in Vladimir Carell and Clive in Rooster; Weisz and Woodall in VladimirRooster: Katrina Marcinowski—HBO; Vladimir: Netflix  by [Judy Berman](https://time.com/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman TV Critic Mar 5, 2026 5:00 PM UTC In the series premiere of Netflix’s _Vladimir_, [Rachel Weisz](https://time.com/4485573/rachel-weisz-denial-holocaust-movie-deborah-lipstadt/) awakens from troubled sleep to a cascade of texts, sighs deeply, and addresses the camera with pleading eyes. “All I want is a life free of complications,” says her unnamed lead. “If I can’t have power, can I at least be free from other people’s drama? Free from their behavior? Free from their needs and desires?” It feels appropriate that _free_ appears four times in this monologue, one of the character's many fourth-wall-shattering asides. She is a blocked novelist who teaches English at a liberal arts college. And there is no setting more emblematic of [freedom](https://time.com/6969851/academic-freedom-is-more-important-than-ever-now/)—and its [discontents](https://time.com/6995389/academic-freedom-classic-education/)—than the campus, where [tenure](https://time.com/7320703/academic-tenure-history/) is supposed toprotect the intellectual liberty of faculty and students living independently for the first time try on new ideas and identities. Among the most common school mottos is _veritas vos liberabit_: the truth will set you free.  Rachel Weisz in Vladimir Shane Mahood—Netflix If only we could agree on what constitutes freedom _or_ truth. Because we never have, higher education has always been a battleground. Protest has [defined academia for generations](https://time.com/6975559/mlk-gaza-civil-rights-history/), from [civil rights](https://time.com/5185819/student-walkouts-history/) and the [Vietnam War](https://time.com/5106608/protest-1968/) in the 1960s to the [ongoing friction](https://time.com/6969875/pro-palestinian-encampments-take-over-college-campuses-across-america/) between supporters of Israel and Palestine. But perhaps the longest-running conflict within higher ed, one that continues to draw the attention of outsiders who haven’t set foot on a grassy quad in decades, surrounds freedom as it’s practiced on campus. [Should free speech be an absolute right](https://time.com/4979235/the-campus-culture-wars/) in the classroom, even if it’s false or [hurtful](https://time.com/6555716/campus-free-speech-codes-history/)? Should faculty and students be free to interact in any way they choose, [including sexually](https://time.com/3697799/harvard-sexual-relationships-students-professors/)? These questions are not new to fiction. But storytellers—many of whom, including _Vladimir_’s creator and the author of [the novel it’s based on](https://time.com/6143359/dark-academia-vladimir-disorientation/), Julia May Jonas, also teach—have paid them particular attention of late. Since the #MeToo movement and the debatably existent phenomenon known as cancel culture seemingly shifted the balance of power on campus, books like Mary Adkins’ _Privilege_, movies like [_After the Hunt_](https://time.com/7313453/after-the-hunt-review/), and TV series like [_The Chair_](https://time.com/6090110/the-chair-review-netflix/) have measured the ramifications when students call out teachers for misconduct, whether sexual or pedagogical. These stories lean tragic; the accused, the accuser, and maybe a complicit bystander come out worse than they went in.  Sandra Oh as Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim and Nana Mensah as Dr. Yasmin McKay in The Chair Eliza Morse—Netflix _Vladimir_ and HBO’s _Rooster_, which premieres on March 8, break that pattern. Though stylistically dissimilar, each is a true comedy that finds humor in how sex scandals destabilize earnest, intellectual, insular academic communities. And each dares to honor the humanity in characters often reduced to predators and prey by one faction, shrill social justice warriors and brave free thinkers by another. The nuance is refreshing but oddly timed, as though it took unprecedented government interference with freedoms taken for granted on campus for those inside their walls to give each other grace. --- Rape isn’t funny, so it helps that neither show strains to make it so. These liaisons are consensual but fraught by infidelity, disparities in age and power, shifting norms. _Rooster_ keeps its engagement with these issues particularly light. The series is less a satire of academia than it is a workplace comedy in the mold of co-showrunner Bill Lawrence’s recent hits [_Ted Lasso_](https://time.com/6081493/ted-lasso-season-2/) and [_Shrinking_](https://time.com/6248761/shrinking-review-apple/). As in those sitcoms, our hero is a single, aimless, middle-aged dad. This flawed man is also kind and generous, by sharing the wisdom he's gained over a lifetime's worth of mistakes, he fosters a community of blunderers helping each other become better people. _Rooster_ puts a slightlymore prestige-coded spin on the Lawrence formula. A timid author who isinsecure about his lack of formal education andhas yet to recover from his divorce five years earlier, protagonist Greg channels his fantasies into pulpy best-sellers about a stud named Rooster. The character might’ve been insufferable if he weren’t played by [Steve Carell](https://time.com/5413761/beautiful-boy-film/), the man who made us enjoy seven seasons with Michael Scott. His daughter, Katie (Charly Clive), is a professor whose Russian-scholar husband Archie’s (_Ted Lasso_’s preening Jamie Tartt, Phil Dunster) affair with a grad student—not _Archie’s_ student, mind you—has made them the subject of rampant gossip on their small New England campus. Greg’s visit to check on her quickly turns into a writer-in-residence gig, fueled by the machinations of the college’s wellness-obsessed man’s-man president (John C. McGinley).  Danielle Deadwyler and Steve Carell in Rooster Katrina Marcinowski—HBO Lawrence and co-showrunner Matt Tarses poke friendly fun at progressive sexual mores. While male instructors are constantly defending their innocent missteps to administrators (Greg calls a querulous girl “my white whale” and is reported for body-shaming), female students boast about conquests and aggressively pursue crushes. Katie becomes a _cause célèbre_ for a younger feminist and is mortified to see her face on T-shirts. We’ve seen versions of these jokes before, but none are mean-spirited, and at least they feel fresher than _Rooster_’s broader political gags. A scene where vegans and gun-control activists scream at each other in a double-booked “free speech zone” could’ve been plucked out of that 32-year-old parody of political correctness on campus, _PCU_. Mostly, though,Archie’s indiscretion serves as a conduit to character comedy about well-meaning screw-ups trying to make good. The ensemble is large and charming. Greg gets a love interest, a poet played by [Danielle Deadwyler](https://time.com/collections/100-most-influential-people-2025/7273827/danielle-deadwyler/); goofy students are to him what soccer players are to Coach Lasso. Far from a stereotypical homewrecker, Archie’s paramour (Lauren Tsai) is a blunt, hyper-logical scientist. There are brief but delightful appearances by [Connie Britton](https://time.com/3998130/connie-britton-american-ultra/) and Robby Hoffman. The only remarkable thing about _Rooster_, really, is that it treats a campus rocked by teacher-student sex as just another backdrop. --- For _Vladimir_, whose very title brings to mind [_Lolita_](https://time.com/3961443/review-lolita-1958/) author and Cornell professor [Vladimir Nabokov](https://time.com/3876664/vladimir-nabokov-and-his-butterflies-photos/), the academic setting is the point. (It also features a college-town bakery named after Lolita’s cast-aside mom, Charlotte Haze.) It’s the superior of the two shows, in large part because of Weisz’s performance, which seduces the viewer with sensuality and humor, only to shock us with unhinged behavior. But what gives it the thematicresonance _Rooster_ never reachesfor is Jonas’ psychological insight into a place steeped in art and ideas that still gets bogged down in bureaucracy and appearances—where the idealism of youth meets the experience of age and passion is championed in theory but policed in practice.  Rachel Weisz and John Slattery in Vladimir Netflix Our introduction to Weisz’s character is alarming. Gliding around a cabin in a nightie, she laments that she’s aged out of her power to arouse men, as a ruggedly handsome younger man chained to a chair in a cardigan and boxer briefs starts screaming. (Let’s presume Weisz’s assessment of her attractiveness is proof she’s an unreliable narrator.) Then we flash back six weeks, and her charisma makes us forget that she might be a monster. Once the English department’s “golden couple,” she and her rakish husband, John (a perfectly cast John Slattery), have, like Archie and Katie but worse, become pariahs following complaints from former students with whom he had sexual relationships. These women were all enthusiastically consenting adults. And it all happened at least a decade ago, before the school had rules against faculty-student fraternization. Still, John is now facing a dismissal hearing. His wife is either pitied, by those who don’t know they have an open marriage, or deemed complicit. In an ironic knife-twist, the department’s proceedings against John are led by David (Matt Walsh), a colleague for whom Weisz’s character nearly left her husband many years earlier. He’s since devolved into a milquetoast who spills cheese curls and then eats them off the floor. Our antiheroine deals with these indignities by developing an erotic obsession with the department’s new, also-married hire, Vladimir ([Leo Woodall](https://time.com/6691699/one-day-review-netflix/)). We’re privy to her feverish fantasies of the two of them luridly pressed up against each other. A buzzy novelist with a volatile writer wife (Jessica Henwick) who leans on him for support and childcare, Vlad is tantalizingly opaque. His texts and puppy-dog grins could be flirtatious or innocent. If we didn’t recognize him as the man who’s restrained in the opening scene, the protagonist’s vacation in the land of delulu might seem harmless.  Rachel Weisz and Leo Woodall in Vladimir Netflix _Vladimir_’s comedy gets as dark and sticky as tar. As in _After the Hunt_, power dynamics are complex, hypocrisy runs rampant, and almost everyone is implicated. But Jonas departs from that film’s cynicism—not just because she wrings so much hilarity out of the sex, ambition, and classic literary archetypes that are as real to these scholars as their own lives, but because she understands that a person doesn’t need to be evil to hurt others. The selfish pursuit of pleasure is often motivation enough, whether the pain attaches to a stymied ex-girlfriend of John’s or the couple’s adult daughter, who learns more about her parents'sex lives than she wanted to know. This is a harsher version of _Rooster_’s insistence that anyone can be rehabilitated, one that acknowledges that some damage is irreparable, and that the people who benefit from infinite patience and forgiveness are usually men of privilege. --- _Vladimir_ the show is significantly lighter than [_Vladimir_ the book](https://time.com/collections/must-read-books-2022/6228651/vladimir/). Maybe that’s because genres are more strictly defined in TV. But the discrepancy also reflects a shift that has taken place since the novel was published, in 2022\. #MeToo has faded from the news cycle, replaced by wars abroad, an affordability crisis at home, and a second Trump term that has wreaked havoc on communities more vulnerable than the typical college girl. For better and worse, emotions have cooled. Guys like John and Archie don’t have to be cartoon villains; as long as their transgressions aren’t monstrous enough to be immortalized in the Epstein files, like [the names of some prominent professors](https://time.com/7380275/epstein-files-resignations/), they can be funny and pitiful and broken and human. At the same time, higher ed is facing external threats that make its internal conflicts seem quaint. A right-wing assault on education that began with [book bannings](https://time.com/7341120/book-bans-supreme-court-first-amendment-reading/) and [attacks on critical race theory](https://time.com/6075193/critical-race-theory-debate/) in public schools has leveled up to [federal lawsuits and funding cuts](https://time.com/7332870/college-leaders-federal-pressures/) aimed at private universities for such offenses as allowing students to protest. Suddenly, the question isn’t philosophical but existential—not _what_ intellectual freedom looks like but _whether_ it can survive in any form. If tweedy free-speech absolutists and their aggrieved students are capable of finding common ground, this will be the issue that unites them. It will also change the stories we set within the easily lampooned groves of academe, and make these shows feel like relics of a more innocent time. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7382296/vladimir-rooster-review/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7382296/vladimir-rooster-review/"},"headline":"Two New Comedies Try to Make Sex on Campus Funny Again","datePublished":"2026-03-05T17:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-19T11:50:11.912Z","description":"Two new TV comedies, Netflix's 'Vladimir' and HBO's 'Rooster' meet the post-post-#MeToo moment with surprising levity—but still feel a bit dated.","url":"https://time.com/7382296/vladimir-rooster-review/","keywords":["Television","review","Magazine","feature"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Judy Berman","jobTitle":"TV Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/judy-berman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/television/","name":"Television"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7382296/vladimir-rooster-review/","name":"Two New Comedies Try to Make Sex on Campus Funny Again"}}]}] ```