I was talking to a friend recently about how American comedies used to come in pairs. There was the Addams Family and The Munsters, I Dream of Genie and Bewitched. I don't know which came first and I guess these things are just zeitgeisty coincidences but I had the thought again this week when I watched the first episode of The Hawk.

 

In this new 10-part Netflix series Ferrell plays Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, a golfer who once had world-beating potential but blew it and now hacks his way around the B list of tournaments, sleeping in a mobile home and travelling chaotically from course to course. But then maybe, just maybe, he can make a comeback and finally win a Grand Slam...

 

Fans of sport on TV might at this point be thinking of Stick, the recent Apple TV hit starring Owen Wilson as a washed up ex-pro scraping a living by mentoring a young protege but thinking about having a crack at competing again himself. A second season is coming so we will see how he does then. 

 

Just to complete the overlap, the star of Stick is Owen Wilson and in The Hawk his brother Luke Wilson plays one of Hawk's rivals. I don't know how this accidental overlap came about – but both shows also hark towards Ted Lasso, finding the humour in the underdog side of competitive sports. And then of course there's Happy Gilmore and Caddyshack, both comedy classics, straight down the middle without hitting the rough. 

 

The trouble for The Hawk is that if I hadn't enjoyed Stick so much I might have enjoyed it more. Ferrell feels slightly on autopilot at the time, going over the top, mugging away and at one point even flashing his butt cheeks, but it's a good kind of autopilot. And it's not all slapstick. You can see there's a bit more heart bursting to get out. He has an interesting relationship, for example, with his caddy, played by feisty comedian Fortune Feimster.

 

Ferrell certainly knows his way around a sporting comedy, having made a few in his time, from movies Talladega Nights to Blades of Glory. Maybe the hope was that in The Hawk he would work the same magic over ten episodes. Unfortunately it doesn't quite come off. The Hawk is par for the course, but Stick hits an eagle.