What comes to mind when you think of professors at an esteemed university? Stuffy old men droning on and on about dusty old books from centuries gone by? Well, you’re only half right when it comes to Netflix’s new series The Chair. Sandra Oh leads as Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim, the new Chair of the English department at the prestigious Pembroke University. She’s determined to shake things up but has to navigate office politics, a slashed budget, and the clash of young idealistic professors with the old tenured crew who just want to show up and do their thing. She’s also got a kinda-sorta-flirty-thing going on with one of her colleagues [wink]. Oh, and on top of all that, Ji-Yoon has adopted a young girl who’s just about as headstrong as her mom is. 

That makes for a lot of moving parts, a ton of ego, and a boatload of dramatics (don’t English professors love drama of a Shakespearean kind?). Sandra Oh is stellar as an overworked, under-resourced new leader and her department knows how to push her buttons (shoutout to the queen, Holland Taylor who sparkles here). The cast’s performances turn a workplace drama set in a stereotypically old-fashioned place into a witty and whimsical series about fitting in and also standing out.