I hate to start on such a bummer note, but I was watching Space Force last night.

It goes without saying that Netflix’s new algorithmically-conceived broad comedy from Office showrunner Greg Daniels is bafflingly dull and lacks any jokes more inventive than its star, Steve Carell, singing “Kokomo” by The Beach Boys while making a funny face. It was such a grim window into a stage of Carell’s career where he seems truly at a loss for what to appear in, and what people want to see him do, that it reminded me of another TV comedy you may have forgotten ever existed: CBS’s 2013 single-season failure The Crazy Ones, starring another flexible star of big and small-screen comedies: one Robin Williams.

Based at a prestigious advertising firm, The Crazy Ones was a desperate attempt to bring Williams back to television at the last moment before the streaming boom normalised the idea of movie stars making short form content. Sarah Michelle Gellar played Williams’ daughter, and if I recall correctly Hamish Linklater was the charming office lank. It wasn’t funny, and it was cancelled after one season. Williams had signed onto The Crazy Ones after a string of escalating cinematic failures that plateaued around the time of License to Wed and Old Dogs.