This week’s picks include an excruciating and absurd comedy,an entertaining documentary about Martin Scorsese,an Alaskan drama starring Australian actor Jason Clarke and Cillian Murphy gets serious (again).

The Chair Company ★★★½ (HBO Max)

Could a show with as many funny moments as this new eight-part limited series be considered anything but a success? A comic mix of the conspiratorial and the crazed from Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin,the partnership behind Netflix’s brain-bending sketch comedy show I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson,The Chair Company works even when it falls short of its brief. It’s an odd,sometimes unbalanced,production. Which makes sense when you consider that it’s about odd,sometimes unbalanced,people.

Wound tight even at a celebratory dinner with his family,Ron Trosper (Robinson) is a project manager at an Ohio mall developer. Ron is a nerdy salaryman – with his glasses and khakis,Robinson looks like the offspring of Bill Gates – committed to his wife Barb (Lake Bell),engaged daughter Natalie (Sophia Lillis),and teenage son Seth (Will Price). But when he suffers a public embarrassment in the office,Ron flips out under his desk and then seethes uncontrollably.

I Think You Should Leave’s finest sketches are a mix of the excruciating and absurd;they start crazy,catch half a breath,and then escape reason altogether. That same sensibility is present here,even as Ron can’t help digging into a mystery he should let go. Co-workers offer bananas advice with a sincere calm,screw-loose sympathisers appear,and a diner becomes a prison dining hall. But within a narrative that’s giving visual shoutouts to paranoid 1970s thrillers such asThree Days of the Condor,the humour can’t always erupt.

It’s not until the fifth episode,as Ron and an unreliable ally search for answers,that a lengthy sequence really careens out of control. A trip to a bar to meet a budding actor gets weirder by the minute – absolute eyes bulging weird – before a Marx Brothers bar fight acts as an accelerant for three more levels of looniness. But the storytelling doesn’t know how to build on that. Too often Ron lies at work and at home because he can’t come clean,enters the irrational,and then carries on.

Robinson,who has a rubbery face that contorts in exasperation,can lean too far into comic theatricality with his performance,while the narrative doesn’t do enough with how Ron’s family,particularly Bell’s fraying wife,truly view him. But as the quick gags and double-take dementedness pile up,you’re left to wonder if Ron is actually the new normal:the “average” American who surrenders to the irrational and self-obsessed. There are many laugh-out-loud gags inThe Chair Company,but that would be the most telling.

Mr Scorsese ★★★★ (Apple TV+)

A feature documentary that understandably grew to five hour-long episodes,this portrait of Martin Scorsese,America’s greatest living filmmaker,is detailed,entertaining and,most importantly,willing to probe. Director Rebecca Miller (Maggie’s Plan) readily explores Scorsese’s genius,but she also wants to document the cost,whether it’s a 1970s cocaine addiction that left him at death’s door or depression resulting from director’s block. There are very different hits in Scorsese’s professional and personal lives.

Weighted towards the 20th century,whether it’s his tenement childhood on New York’s Lower East Side or the struggle to deliver classics such asTaxi Driver andRaging Bull,the series digs into Scorsese’s depiction of violence and the Catholic priest/gangster dichotomy that has shadowed his life. “You have to be cruel enough to be an artist,” Scorsese tells Miller,with the vast array of testimony from friends,family,and collaborators – plus Scorsese’s own archival material – offering valuable perspective.

Miller and Scorsese circle the idea that the longest-running project the 82-year-old has brought to fruition is finding his lasting sense of equilibrium. It’s best mapped by the women in Scorsese’s wife,including frank ex-wives such as Isabella Rossellini,several daughters and his long-time editor Thelma Schoonmaker. The series is full of admiration for Scorsese’s craft,which is artfully expressed by Miller,but the myth never supplants the man.

Boots ★★★½ (Netflix)

An update ofPrivate Benjamin andBiloxi Blues – the outlier recruit tries to navigate basic army training – this sometimes harsh American comic-drama is set in the 1990s and follows Cameron Cope (Miles Heizer),a secretly gay young man who tries to reset his life by following his best friend,Ray McAffey (Liam Oh),into the Marine Corps.

Adapted by Andy Parker (Tales of the City) from Greg Cope White’s memoirThe Pink Marine,the show has a genuine humanity,revealing the varied characters’ complicated lives amid a repressive environment focused on preparing young men for combat.

The Last Frontier ★★½ (Apple TV+)

While it has a sturdy lead performance from Australian actor Jason Clarke as US marshall Frank Remnick,a veteran lawman whose ready-to-retire assignment in wintry Alaska goes haywire when a prison transport plane crashes and dozens of high-security prisoners escape,this crime thriller can’t quite rise above the workmanlike. Going out of its way to offer up a new focus for each episode – there’s24 andPrison Break in its creative DNA – as different inmates make themselves known to Frank and a disaffected CIA agent (Haley Bennett),the show falls between hard-nosed procedural and Dad action.

Steve ★★★ (Netflix)

Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy gives a roiling lead performance in this British drama,playing the lit-fuse head teacher at a 1990s reform school for teenage boys whose dedication has left him more vulnerable than some of his charges.

The Irish actor’s turmoil is magnetic,but the storytelling can be explanatory and sometimes the overt technique of Belgian director Tim Mielants (Small Things Like These) is skilful but distancing. Watch for the cast:Murphy,Tracey Ullman as a colleague,and the hugely promising Jay Lycurgo as Shy,one of the students.

Karen Pirie (season 2) ★★★½ (BritBox)

Given there’s stockpiled source material in the form of Val McDermid’s series of crime novels about Scottish police detective Karen Pirie,a three-year wait for a second season of the television adaptation seems overly long. Thankfully,with a compelling Lauren Lyle in the title role,this British crime drama still outranks most of its many competitors. Creator Emer Kenny,who plays Karen’s friend and colleague Dr River Wilde,has crafted a genuine cold case mystery,complete with flashbacks to the 1980s and a deeper sense of the detective’s prickly perseverance.

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