There’s something comforting about a well-done workplace comedy. It’s the relatability of people sanded down by capitalism, forced to go into cubicles or other office spaces in the same way that so many viewers do every Monday, and it usually allows for a bit of perspective. Think your job sucks? At least you don’t work at the DMV. That’s the setting for what’s almost certain to be a hit for CBS, one of the few places a half-hour comedy can still register respectable numbers. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel by any stretch, and it too often resorts to the same ineffective vein of comedy in its first few episodes, but what’s promising about “DMV” is its confidence after only four episodes. Comedies often take time, maybe even a full season, to find their voice, and “DMV” is already at that phase where it just needs to refine what it does well to become a weekly watch for the millions of people who still watch CBS.
Dana Klein, a producer on “Friends,” created “DMV,” but this show feels more of a piece with the recent workplace comedy “Superstore” than the genetically blessed customers of Central Perk. That underrated and consistently funny NBC hit balanced the drudgery of working at a big box store with the relatable characters who need that job to make ends meet (and, like the creator’s very funny “St. Denis Medical,” was a subversively pointed show in terms of social commentary). “Superstore” used encounters with customers as sort of quick punchline asides, cutting to them for a laugh before going back to the main cast. “DMV” works the same way with people at this Hollywood Department of Motor Vehicles just for an hour or two used as humorous tangents to the main plot.
The main plot centers three DMV employees: Colette (Harriet Dyer, coming off another similar workplace comedy “American Auto,” which was canceled too soon), Vic (Tony Cavalero, Keefe from “The Righteous Gemstones”), and Gregg (Tim Meadows, always solid). Of course, they have very different comedic energies to allow for different veins of comedy to exploit. Gregg is the lifer who yells at new guy Noa (Alex Tarrant) about working too hard because of the standard it will set that he quite simply refuses to meet. Vic is the oddball good ol’ boy, the one who yells at Colette about how she’s passing too many people on their driver’s test. And Collete is the real lead, the awkward sweetheart who had bigger plans for her life but tries to make the most of it.
Tries and usually fails. The big issue with the four episodes of “DMV” sent to press is how often the writers lean on Collette being a goofy dummy, usually as she looks longingly at the handsome Noa. Whether she’s climbing out a bathroom window, talking to Noa with a women’s pad on her skirt, or pretending not to work at the DMV when she sees an old friend who’s now a successful actress, so much of the humor feels like it’s almost bullying Collette that it verges on misogyny. It’s an easy pattern for the writers to get out of soon, which makes reviewing a sitcom based on four episodes relatively fruitless, but if they don’t give Collette a victory and maybe a bit more confidence soon then the schtick is going to get more exhausting than actually being at the DMV.
What’s promising about CBS’s latest offering is the varied registers of the ensemble this early in its existence. Yes, Dyer’s forced to do basically the same routine too many times but Meadows, Cavalero, and Tarrant inject some variety into the rest of the show, as does the very funny Molly Kearney as Barbara, the socially stunted boss of the DMV office. A subplot in an episode in which DMV photographer Ceci (Gigi Zumbado) works with Barbara to take her head shot for the office wall of directors is unexpectedly funny, a sign that a show is working because it’s not content to merely stay in the same lane of Collette’s unrequited love for 22 minutes.
TV is in such an unusual place in 2025 with more shows being created for viral clips than actual viewers. The top 15 shows on TV last week were all sports, reality, or news. And yet CBS, largely because of its old base, keeps finding a way to buck trends, creating two new hits last year in “Matlock” and “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” the most-watched new drama and comedy of ’24-25. People may not want to work at the “DMV,” but TV creators want to work at CBS.
Four episodes screened for review. Show premieres October 13 on CBS and Paramount+.
