Community: Season 6

Jeff Winger is firmly ensconced in his new role as a teacher at Greendale Community College, but times are changing. Shirley has moved away to look after her sick father and the college is still in danger of closure. The Save Greendale committee is reinforced by the arrival of consultant Frankie Dart and old-skool computer expert Elroy Patashnik, who have to help the few remaining old students save the day.

It's ironic, but also a relief that Community, a show which hovered perpetually on the edge of cancellation for its entire 110-episode run, was allowed to end on its own terms. The show had been picked up by Yahoo after NBC terminated it at the end of the fifth season and Yahoo were keen to allow it to continue for at least one more season, but showrunner Dan Harmon decided to quit whilst he was ahead. His reasoning was that too many of the original regular cast had left and the show was no longer working with the same energy.

This is clearly visible on-screen. Community now feels like a very different beast. Although many of the episode plots were driven by the antics of Jeff Winger, Senor Chang or the Dean's latest crazy college activity (all of which remain intact), in many ways it was Troy and Shirley who were the heart of the show. At least Troy got a farewell in Season 5 but Shirley's extremely abrupt between-season departure is clearly an unplanned event that left the writers reeling to try to overcome it, and they don't really succeed.

This is no slight against Paget Brewster (Frankie Dart) or Keith David (Elroy), who both do very good work. It's just that they're being held to the very high standards of the characters who came before them, who had an unmatched chemistry with the rest of the cast. A sense of continuity is also not maintained due to the inexplicable departure of both John Oliver and Jonathan Banks from the Season 5 recurring cast.

The result is a season of Community that feels like it's running a little with its wings clipped. Episodes are a little less inventive than previously and Abed particularly feels limited as a character, as he no longer has Troy to riff off. This is a shame because many of the episode ideas feel like vintage Community: Honda sponsoring a ridiculous number of product placements at the college, a suddenly-famous Chang leaving midway through Abed's video shoot (forcing him to recycle the same brief clips into an entire movie) and the revelation that the paintball game has not ceased as previous seasons indicated, but instead moved underground.

The show is still funny, there's still some laughs and some more emotional beats, but there's also a sense of unbalance, of something missing. This is a subdued version of Community, one that's certainly still worth watching and is still a lot of fun, but also not running with the energy of earlier seasons. One moment where the show does rise to the occasion is the finale, which is bittersweet, poignant and genuinely funny, whilst retaining the metacommentary creator Dan Harmon is best-known for.

Community's sixth and final season (***½) is available now in the UK and USA. The much-promised movie has, alas, not yet appeared.

Community: Season 5

Jeff Winger's renewed legal career has crashed and burned, leading him reluctantly back to Greendale Community College and a new job. He reconnects with old friends and faces new challenges.

Community was a sitcom which fused pop culture references, metacommentary on the show's own fictional nature and biting humour, all elements brought to the table by its creator and chief writer, Dan Harmon. Due to behind-the-scenes politics and a clash between Harmon and actor Chevy Chase, Harmon was fired from the show between Seasons 3 and 4, and a new showrunning team brought on board. The resulting fourth season, although not a total disaster, was found to be lacking compared to the previous years. With Chase departing, Harmon was reinstated for the final two seasons.

Season 5 is an immediate improvement over its forebear. The high concepts are back, such as a completely animated episode which sees the regular characters joining G.I. Joe and a "Floor is Lava" game that gets completely out of hand. These are fun and amusing, with the stories and actors clearly reinvigorated by Harmon's return and Chase's departure (most of the cast agree that Chase could be a toxic presence on set).

However, the show struggles with a much bigger mid-season change: the departure of Donald Glover as Troy Barnes. Troy is one of the most consistently funny characters on the show and is also arguably its heart, with the Troy-Abed relationship being the cornerstone of the series. Glover's departure leaves a gap that the show can't quite fill, despite a spirited attempt to team up Abed with Annie instead.

Other changes are more successful: after a two-season absence, John Oliver returns as Professor Duncan and immediately re-injects his brand of snarky humour back into the series, whilst Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad) is phenomenal as Professor Hickey. A second Dungeons and Dragons episode may be a little self-derivative, but it works well, and the season-long arc about finding a way of saving Greendale is reasonably successful.

The fifth season of Community (****) restores some of the zest and energy lost in the fourth, but the departure of Troy and the near-immediate reduction in character of Abed is a sign that perhaps the show has suffered too many cast departures to remain viable. It is available now in the UK and USA.

Community: Season 4

Jeff Winger's time at Greendale Community College is coming to an end. Graduation, and a return to his former career as a hotshot lawyer, is now in sight. But standing in the way is a villainous English history teacher, his own (reluctantly growing) sense of community and events unfolding in another timeline altogether.

Every long-running series has its Attack of the Clones, Crossroads of Twilight or "Jack's tattoo episode" moment, when the creative engines misfire and things fall out of alignment. Characters don't gel like they used, lines are delivered with less conviction and everything just goes a bit wrong.

In the case of Community, this problem was inflicted on the show by the studio: creator and showrunner Dan Harmon was fired between Seasons 3 and 4 and the show had to struggle on without its primary creative force. Given that Community is a finely balanced mix of meta-commentary, comedy and character development and even Harmon couldn't get it right all of the time (see the uneven opening to Season 1 or the middle of Season 3), it's unsurprising that Season 4 is a bit of a mess.

The show remains entertaining, even though the moments of out-of-character behaviour and dialogue grate. The performances remain strong and there's some genius moments of casting, with Malcolm McDowell playing the hard history teacher and a reasonable turn by Matt Lucas as an Inspector Spacetime fan to rival Abed. There's also some nice follow-ups to earlier seasons, with the finale combining both the 'darkest timeline' storyline that began in early Season 3 and finding a way of bringing back the paintball game in a different way. Even Britta recovers from her Season 2/3 descent into ditziness and is a moderately more interesting character this year. There's also a clever episode - a puppet musical - which pokes fun at the whole idea of high-concept episodes and feels like it could have been made on Harmon's watch.

Unfortunately these high points only emphasise the lows: the over-reliance on the Dean and the now utterly-redundant Chang for cheap jokes, the mishandling of Abed and indeed the whole pop culture angle (often just referencing things rather than using them to highlight plot or character) and the total sidelining of Pierce until he basically just vanishes from the show altogether. The actors, directors and writers make a heroic effort to make up for Harmon's absence, but there is no disguising that the show is no longer operating on the same level. Fortunately, the studio saw sense and Harmon was reinstated for the fifth (and, for now, final) season, which has been much more positively received.

Community's fourth season (***) is certainly watchable, with its share of funny moments. It also does move the characters and storylines forward more successfully than I was expecting. However, there are too many moments which misfire, too many moments when characters say and do things that feel off and too many lazy references to previous, funnier episodes. There's some fun to be had from revisiting Greendale, but Harmon's absence is palpable. The season is available now in the UK and USA.

Community: Season 3

It's the group's third year at Greendale Community College and once again their attempts to get good grades are threatened by their flamboyant Dean, the mentally unstable Chang (now unwisely made part of the college's security force) and a new threat in the form of Vice Dean Laybourne, head of the Air Conditioning Repair Annex, who now seeks to take control of the college for himself.

After the second season of Community, which featured an overload of classic, high-concept episodes and an internal battle between the other members of the group and Pierce, it was unclear which direction the third season would go in. For the first couple of episodes, it's clear the producers don't either. The addition of John Goodman (as Laybourne) and Michel K. Williams as Professor Kane are good starts, but it's not until the third episode, Remedial Chaos Theory, that the show hits its former stride again. The Emmy and Hugo-nominated episode, which revisits the same events in six different timelines and cleverly comments on each character's place in the group in the process, is flat-out hilarious as well as being clever, and sets up a couple of recurring elements that are periodically revisited throughout the year.

However, despite this early high point, the third season remains patchy. The decision to tone Pierce down this season results in his near-total absence from many episodes. Without him in an adversarial role, the writers seem to struggle to find something plausible for him each week without him falling back on his traditional (and now rather tired) homophobia and casual racism. There is a potentially promising storyline when Pierce's ancient and even more horrific father arrives in town, allowing the writers to show how the group has made Pierce (relatively) more tolerant and understanding, but even this is under-explored.

In the meantime, we have yet more adventures with Chang being insane, which is getting old. Ken Jeong is funny enough that this - more or less - works, but you can't help feeling it's a bit of a cheap stand-by. Even worse is the decision to make Dean Pelton a regular character. This results in a lot of running gags and very broad comedy based around the fact that the Dean is gay, which feels odd for a series that spends so much time trying to avoid cliches. Having said that, the Dean's battle with his nemesis Laybourne does give the season a dramatic spine and a sense of direction.

Elsewhere, the performances of the regulars remain superb, individual gags are often hilarious and, after taking a back seat in Season 2, character development moves to the fore, with the show concentrating on Abed as an actual character than an ongoing commentary on what's happening in each episode. Annie, Shirley, Troy and Jeff also get good moments of character evolution throughout the season. On the flipside of that, Britta fares poorly, with the slight turn she took into 'dumb blonde' territory in Season 2 now turning into a full-scale character regression (so overt that it's even lampshaded at one point). It's a shame that a character who was an essential foil for Jeff in the first two seasons is now being treated as a hate figure by almost everyone.

In terms of the episodes, Remedial Chaos Theory is the undeniable high point, but other episodes are strong. Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps, in which the gang tell horror stories (so Britta can try to work out which of them is a sociopath-in-the-making) is extremely amusing, especially Abed's remorselessly sensible and logical take on a horror movie narrative. The Ken Burns-influenced mid-season two-parter, which presents an epic blanket fort vs pillow fort war fought across the whole college (complete with detailed, animated maps of the battle lines and commentary from those involved), is another instant classic. Basic Lupine Urology isn't just a great episode, but also a phenomenal mickey-take of the Law and Order franchise (and Michael K. Williams gets to make a few references to his former role as Omar on The Wire, which takes place in the same fictional universe). Curriculum Unavailable tries to recast the events of the entire series with the study group being inmates at a mental institution, a successful satire of unconvincing 'plot twists' in long-running series. Digital Estate Planning, which forces the group to play an 8-bit video game, is almost as good as Remedial, with the video game being used to expose both rifts in the group (not to mention the Christian Shirley's suppressed homicidal streak) and encourage their cooperation as well.

Against this, there's probably a few too many episodes centred around the Dean and Chang, whose broad characterisations don't lend themselves too well to central roles in an ongoing series. There's also the feeling that Community's meta-awareness and commitment to avoiding cliche is too often turned into distinct smugness at its own cleverness. This is most notable in the first few episodes, before it calms down and just gets on with having fun again.

After the third season, Community wouldn't quite be the same again. Showrunner Dan Harmon was taken off the show for the fourth season (though he would return for the fifth) and Chevy Chase would depart in the following year.

The third season of Community (****) is relentlessly entertaining, very funny and often very clever. Where it falls down is not matching it own very high standards and occasionally getting too tangled up in its own desire to be funny whilst avoiding stereotypes, whilst not always having anything new or interesting for the characters to do (particularly Britta, Pierce, Chang and the Dean). But ultimately this is still one of the funniest shows on the air. The season is available on DVD in the UK and USA.

Community: Season 2

It's the second year at Greendale Community College for Jeff Winger and his study group, who are now taking an anthropology class together. Their mutual study time is again interrupted by a succession of unlikely adventures (ranging from Abed having a mental breakdown in which he envisages the world as a claymation film to a total paintball apocalypse) as they grow and learn together. Apart from Pierce, obviously, who becomes even more of an obnoxious bigot.

Season 2 of Community sees the show building on the moderate change in direction seen in late Season 1, when creator Dan Harmon started leaving behind more mundane storylines about relationships in favour of whackier adventures, often revolving around some kind of gimmick or high concept (albeit a well-executed one). Most of the episodes in Season 2 can be summed up by their concept: the bottle episode where everyone searches for Annie's missing pen; the claymation episode; the clip show which doesn't actually use any reused footage; the paintball war sequel two-parter; and the now-famous Dungeons and Dragons episode.

This move to a more concept-driven approach has both upsides and downsides. The show is definitely much more inherently funny in the second season, with both big ideas and small gags being delivered on a more consistently amusing basis. Unfortunately, this moves does come a little at the expense of serious characterisation. Annie and Abed both get some good scenes of emotional development, but other characters suffer: Britta is a lot less present this year and has less to do, whilst Shirley is all but missing in some episodes. Even our erstwhile main character Jeff seems much less the focal character and more just one of the band this time around. The issues with Jeff and Britta seem related to the fact that the will they/won't they dynamic of the first season has been resolved, but indicates there isn't as much to their characters as some of the others without that element. That said, Jeff gets a bit more to do towards the end of the season revolving around his (unasked-for) position as the group's leader and his conflicted feelings over that.

There's a larger secondary cast as well, with the introduction of the Dean's nemesis from a rival college and more recurring students in the anthropology class. Dr. Ian Duncan also has some great scenes as the teacher of the class (replacing ex-Golden Girl Betty White as Dr. Bauer, after a hilarious turn in the first episode of the season) and also a key role in the excellent claymation episode. The Dean is more bearable as well, mainly because he gets an (splendidly-lampshaded in the not-a-clip-show episode) amusing recurring gag. This larger cast makes the college feel busier and more like a real college, but also sometimes dilutes the focus on our core six characters.

Another challenge for the show is how it handles the character of Pierce, played by Chevy Chase. As established in Season 1 Pierce has racist and sexist views, but the show really seems reluctant to have him evolving away from them (since that would be unrealistic for a character of his age, whose views are more likely to be set in stone). At the same time, it's also unrealistic for the other characters to be so tolerant of someone who spends most of his time insulting them. This results in a story arc where Pierce turns into an outright villain whose antics put him at odds with the rest of the group. This is partially successful, giving us the 'Pierce's gifts' episode which is fairly decent, but otherwise sabotaged by the need not to go all-out with it lest it means Pierce not interacting with the rest of the characters at all. A simpler solution would have been to simply remove the character, but apparently the network considered him too key to the show to lose (and, in fact, choosing to remove even the showrunner over Chase between the third and fourth seasons). The entire issue is well-handled in the D&D episode, where Pierce is forced to play separately to the rest of the team (a familiar situation to most D&D groups where the characters become divided), but other episodes struggle to deal with it as well.

Overall, Community remains a funny, well-written and often extremely clever show in its second season (****½). It loses a little depth to the characters in favour of high concepts, but remains resolutely entertaining. The season is available now in the UK and USA.

Community: Season 1

Jeff Winger is a hotshot lawyer whose career has been brought to a screeching halt due to the slight problem of his qualifications being non-existent. He has to attend Greendale Community College for four years and pass a series of tests to regain his law credentials. An attempt to seduce a fellow student, Britta, by inviting her to a fictitious study group spirals out of control, resulting in the creation of a real study group. As the group goes through the school year, they learn and grow together. And also inadvertently create a copyright-infringing school anthem, give the college a guy in a gimp suit as its mascot and then almost destroy the place in a titanic paintball game that goes horrendously awry.

Community is entering its fourth season in the USA, but may be one of the best-kept secrets on television. Airing to mediocre ratings in the States and having almost no profile at all in the UK, it's nevertheless a funny, confident show which acts as both an obvious comedy and also something of a commentary on social dynamics and pop culture. The 'community' of the title is a reference to the central characters, who are all outcasts of one type of another, and their bonding together, and also to the wider college around them, personified through a recurring cast of tutors and other students.

Early episodes are mostly spent with the show trying to avoid cliches, with the character of Abed (Danny Pudi) always ready to compare an episode's storyline to something he saw on Friends or M*A*S*H*. This constant meta-commentary and attempts at ironic post-post-modernism are amusing but also slightly tiresome, with the show occasionally feeling a little smug with itself or else flailing at trying not to be caught between cliches. However, it's not long before the writers stop caring about that (at least quite so much) and instead concentrate on having fun. Community melds both the characters and the situations they encounter into compelling storylines that feel a lot longer than their modest 22 minutes-per-episode run times would suggest.

The actors are all excellent in their roles, particularly Joel McHale as Jeff, who has to make an inherently unlikable character likable without weakening the character, which he just about manages to do. The aforementioned Pudi is also great at portraying a character who initially appears to be the most predictable of the group but rapidly develops some interesting depths. Donald Glover takes the initially dull character of Troy and rapidly (by the end of episode two and its iconic Spanish rap number) turns him into a highlight of the show, thanks to some great comic timing. Yvette Nicole Brown's Shirley initially appears to be the 'mother' figure of the show, but some revelations about her personal life and gossipping tendencies turn that on its head. There's also a glorious cynicism about the character of Pearce (played by Chevy Chase, enjoying a career resurgence), a casually sexist and racist old man whose role in the group appears to primarily be making the other characters feel good about themselves. Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs round off the primary cast as Annie and Britta, who initially both seem fairly straightforward characters before gaining more layers as the season progresses.

Slightly less successful are the supporting characters, most notably Ken Jeong as 'Senor' Chang whose character is rather broad (more effectively in some episodes than others) and Jim Rash as the Dean, who random weirdness (he has a sexual predilection for people in dalmatian costumes) is wearying. Still, both have their strong moments as the season progresses.

After the first few, slightly more pedestrian episodes, the season takes an upward turn in quality, culminating in the now-legendary paintball episode, Modern Warfare, when the show's ingredients combine together to create something hilarious, mildly emotional and completely demented, leaving the viewer eager to see what the writers and cast can do in the second year.

Season 1 of Community (****½) is well-written, sharply-acted and finely-observed, with more going on under the hood than you might expect from a situation comedy. The show is available now in the UK and USA.