Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe should not work together. On paper, it's absurd: The unhinged 30 Rock veteran and Harry Potter himself, paired in a mockumentary about a disgraced football star trying to rebuild his reputation with the help of a pretentious documentarian.
And yet NBC's The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins is, against all odds, comedy heaven.
The premise is simple: Reggie Dinkins (Morgan) is a former NFL star whose scandals have made him radioactive. Arthur Tobin (Radcliffe) is an award-winning filmmaker convinced he can rehabilitate Reggie's image through the power of cinema. What follows is a collision of egos, worldviews, and comedic sensibilities that shouldn't mesh but absolutely does.
Morgan is doing what Morgan does best: playing a larger-than-life man-child with just enough vulnerability to make you care. Radcliffe, meanwhile, leans fully into self-parody, playing Arthur as an insufferable auteur who quotes Terrence Malick and believes in the "transformative power of the frame." The show is at its best when it's skewering both of them.
Created by Robert Carlock and Sam Means (veterans of 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), Reggie Dinkins has that same manic energy—jokes layered on jokes, sight gags in the background, characters who are grotesque but never mean-spirited. Early reviews have been strong, with a Metacritic score of 73 suggesting critics are on board.
The real test will be whether audiences show up. is not the comedy powerhouse it once was, and broadcast sitcoms struggle to find viewers in a streaming-dominated landscape. But has the kind of specificity and weirdness that could turn it into a cult hit.
