Review: ‘Mr. Robinson’: If Bootsy Collins could give you detention

Craig Robinson, who played warehouse manager Darryl Philbin on “The Office,” now and for the next three weeks has an NBC sitcom of his own. “Mr. Robinson,” which debuts Wednesday, will run through its six-episode order two at a time, back to back; and while I can’t say whether this scheduling amounts to a vote of little confidence, if you blink and miss it, you will not have missed much.

The series, which nods toward Robinson’s own background, features him as a newly full-time music teacher still trying to become famous with the soul-funk band he runs with his kid brother and messy, profligate roommate (Brandon T. Jackson). “Kind of like if Bootsy Collins could give you detention,” is how Craig describes his position. But he is not the detention-giving sort.

The show seems to have been made as an update of 1980s old-school school and workplace comedies, perhaps by people who have fond and even formative memories of “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper,” “Head of the Class” and “WKRP in Cincinnati.” There is something purposeful in its embrace of ancient tropes and total disregard for the niceties of reality that one might call bold in a charitable mood, but backward otherwise.

In the style of that time, it is tirelessly warmhearted and whimsical. Every episode ends with a lesson, usually some variation on the idea that doing right by your friends, your family, your students, your colleagues is more important than “a gig at the hottest spot in town,” a contract with a rock-star record producer so successful “he has his own brand of methadone,” or a job with a real-life famous soul-funk band, big in the years that “Welcome Back, Kotter” was on, who make a cameo appearance in the final episode.

His colleagues include a math teacher (Spencer Grammer) who is also a stripper who is also a flipper of houses (she dreams of creating a reality show, “Stripper Flipper”); a shy science teacher (Asif Ali) with a crush on the math teacher; a thick phys-ed teacher (Ben Koldyke) who wants to be called “Magnum P.E.”; and an English teacher (Meagan Good), who made a passel on Wall Street and then decided to “give back,” and happens to be the woman Craig stood up for prom, and has followed to school.

It is always nice to see Peri Gilpen, once of “Frasier,” who here plays the school principal, a former hot mess and 1980s groupie (there’s that decade again), who is unfortunately asked to comment on Robinson’s “Coco Crisp hair,” “Nubian glow” and “sweet African musk.” Tim Bagley is her boss, a super-square fan of Craig’s band who wants to “jam” and “funk it up” with him. He has a dog called Mr. Pickles.

“Mr. Robinson” is not horrible; or when it is, it is only in passing. (The cast is good, there are some laughs.) It just feels weak and fatally retrograde.

Worst of all, it does its star few favors, scanting his half-deadpan, slightly threatening charm in the drive to make his cool feel cuddly. But it won’t kill his career; and it will be over soon.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

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‘Mr. Robinson’

Where: NBC

When: 9 p.m. Wednesday

Rating: TV-PG-L (may be unsuitable for young children with an advisory for coarse language)

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