Brockmire

Our Review

The best sports show that’s barely about sports. Hank Azaria plays Jim Brockmire, a major-league announcer whose on-air meltdown (after discovering his wife’s affair, live, for ten unhinged minutes) made him a viral joke — a decade later he’s calling minor-league ball in a rust-belt Pennsylvania town, drinking his liver into retirement. Azaria’s performance is monumental: the velvet broadcast voice, the bottomless bourbon bitterness, the slow excavation of the grief under the jokes.

Amanda Peet’s Jules James, the team’s owner and Brockmire’s sparring partner, is one of the great underappreciated female leads of the decade — their love story between two alcoholics deciding whether to save each other is the show’s real pitch count. Tyrel Jackson Williams’s Charles tracks the show’s growth from barroom comedy to genuine drama about American decline (season 3’s opioid-town arc is quietly devastating). Four seasons, one clean arc, a perfect finale. IFC’s best show ever.

Verdict: Watch it. A filthy-mouthed poem about second chances.