Will Ferrell has never really needed a great script to be funny, and The Hawk leans on that fact more than most. Created by Ferrell alongside longtime collaborators Harper Steele and Chris Henchy, this ten-episode Netflix comedy follows Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, once the top golfer in the world, now stuck on the back nine of his career and refusing to admit he is one stroke away from anything but the greatest comeback in golf history. It is a broad, silly premise, and the show mostly commits to being exactly that.
The Setup
Lonnie has not won a major in years, and the people around him know it even if he refuses to. His son Lance, played by Jimmy Tatro, has become the new golden boy of the sport, which turns family dinners into something considerably more complicated. His ex-wife Stacy, played by Molly Shannon, still orbits his life and still cannot fully let go of the chaos that comes with him. Around them, Fortune Feimster, David Hornsby, Luke Wilson, and Chris Parnell fill out a supporting cast that gives the show plenty of places to land a joke.
What Works
This is a cast that knows exactly how to be funny together, and the show is smart enough to get out of their way. Ferrell finds a genuinely likable, slightly delusional energy in Lonnie, a guy who talks to golf balls like they can hear him and refuses to let age or reality slow him down, and it is the kind of performance that carries a scene even when the writing around him is thin. Molly Shannon and Jimmy Tatro both get real comedic moments of their own rather than just reacting to Ferrell, and the family dynamic at the center of the show has enough chaotic warmth to keep you invested episode to episode. When The Hawk commits fully to its goofiest instincts, it lands more often than not.
Where It Stumbles
The show is vague in places where it probably should not be. Lonnie’s big meltdown, the one supposedly responsible for years of stalled career, stays frustratingly undefined, and some episodes coast on the cast’s charm rather than giving them anything particularly sharp to work with. This is not a series interested in the kind of specificity that made shows like Eastbound and Down or Ted Lasso click as fully realized worlds. It is closer to a loose collection of funny people doing funny bits inside a golf comedy frame, and there are stretches where you can feel the show reaching for a joke instead of earning one.
The Verdict
The Hawk is not trying to reinvent the sports comedy, and it does not need to. It is breezy, frequently funny, and stacked with performers who know exactly what they are doing, even when the scripts do not always give them enough to chew on. For a summer comedy built around watching Will Ferrell refuse to grow up gracefully, it delivers plenty of laughs and a genuinely charming family mess at its center.
The Hawk is streaming now on Netflix. All 10 episodes available. Created by Will Ferrell, Harper Steele, and Chris Henchy. Rated TV-MA.
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