When did golf become the sport du jour for broad, daft comedy? It’s a trend that goes back at least as far as 1980, when Caddyshack infused the serene, well-at-heel country-club pastime with the rowdy irreverence of comedy icon Rodney Dangerfield. Sixteen years later, we got Happy Gilmore, wherein a rageful and destructive Adam Sandler pushed the juxtaposition one step further. Now, the swings are coming thick and fast. Last year we had Happy Gilmore 2 and Apple TV’s Owen Wilson golfing comedy Stick; Netflix's latest series The Hawk sees comedy vet Will Ferrell pick up a putter to play a PGA has-been in pursuit of a comeback.
The Hawk is familiar territory for Ferrell: one more sports comedy to chuck on a pile that already includes films such as the fondly remembered Nascar parody Talladega Nights, the dreary ice skating lark Blades of Glory, and the forgettable basketball pastiche Semi-Pro. Here, the decision to forsake the big screen in favour of a 10-episode streaming series attests more to Hollywood’s present aversion to studio comedies than any innate demands of the material, though – given how sparse the laughs are over the course of this run, and how thinly drawn the characters, it’s hard not to wonder if this would have been better crammed into a lean 90 minutes.
