‘Avenue 5’ Review: A Space Comedy That Blandly Goes Forth

Avenue 5, HBO’s new series from Veep creator Armando Iannucci, marks the full time return to comedy for frequent Veep guest star Hugh Laurie, after a decade of playing America’s favorite curmudgeonly doctor on the hit network drama House. Even with Laurie in the starring role of Captain Ryan Clark however, it isn’t a particularly good show, and yet it is strangely compelling. 

Before watching an episode of Avenue 5, you should know that it’s a spoof that isn’t exactly laugh out loud funny. The premise is high concept and is where most of the humor comes from. On paper, Ryan Clark is the captain of Avenue 5. The reality is far different. An engineer named Joe hired Clark to play the role of “captain” on the ship. Unfortunately, everything goes wrong and a woefully unqualified Clark must calm down the vacationing passengers, who signed up for an eight-week space cruise. Due to an accident, the ship was thrown off course. The new trajectory shows that it will take the spaceship three years to get home. 

This first episode is more or less a table setter for things to come. The series will explore how the crew and passengers deal with being stuck in a tight space with the same people for much longer than any of them had expected. Based off of this premise, it seems safe to say Avenue 5 has at least three seasons worth of stories to sustain it while it works out its growing pains. I can’t see the show continuing much beyond that, however, without contrived reasons for the spaceship continually getting thrown off course. Even if that becomes a running gag, it’s likely to get old quickly. 

It may not be a hit from the start, but Avenue 5 deserves the chance to grow. Not every show is an instant winner. While the show is clearly a Star Trek spoof, you don’t have to be a fan of the acclaimed sci-fi series or science fiction in general to appreciate the main point of the show: an inadequate leader is forced to bumble his way through his job as he hopes no one notices that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. 

Rating: 5 out of 10 

Avenue 5 airs Sunday nights on HBO, and it is currently streaming on HBO GO and HBO NOW.