Though I once checked email in a room where others watched Elf (2003), I have otherwise not seen a Will Ferrell performance since his 2000 turn as George W. Bush (“Strategery!”) on Saturday Night Live. Those wishing to relitigate the merits of Anchorman (2004) or Step Brothers (2008) will need to look elsewhere. What I can tell you is that Ferrell’s new TV project, the Netflix golf “comedy” The Hawk, is easily the worst show of 2026 and one of the stupidest I’ve seen in years. Whatever one thinks of the mugging man-child’s brand of humor, this is one approach shot that gets nowhere near the hole. Ferrell plays Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, a former world No. 1 golfer reduced to hacking it on the minor-league Korn Ferry Tour. Presumably inspired by John Daly, the real-life PGA’s erstwhile lovable renegade, Lonnie is a beer-guzzling, obscenity-spewing fan favorite well into his athletic dotage. Observing his comeback attempt produces two questions, one narrative and the other aesthetic: Can the ex-champ make it back to the top tour and capture a U.S. Open, thus completing the career Grand Slam? And, more importantly, can audiences be made, on at least two or three occasions, to chuckle? The answer to that second question is a firm “no.” Indeed, watching Netflix’s latest effort, I found myself yearning for an old-fashioned laugh track, if for no other reason than to grasp where the jokes were supposed to be. Like far too many streaming comedies these days (Time Bandits, The Decameron — I could go on and on), The Hawk belongs to its genre mostly on the basis of being absurd. Case in point: In the first few episodes alone, Lonnie plays air guitar with a golf club and sports a frilly red thong. No human being will crack so much as a smile at these gestures, but they are mindlessly silly, so in they go.