Tires Season 1 Review – Stick a nail in this one and delete it from your watchlist

Episode Guide

Episode 1 -| Review Score – 2.5/5
Episode 2 -| Review Score – 2/5
Episode 3 -| Review Score – 2/5
Episode 4 -| Review Score – 2/5
Episode 5 -| Review Score – 2/5
Episode 6 -| Review Score – 2/5

Workplace comedies are nothing new. While some will cite The Office (the UK version) as being the show that kickstarted this sitcom trend, we can look back into the annals of TV history to find examples of others. Fawlty Towers, Taxi, and Cheers are just three shows that will be familiar to you, though there are lots of other comedy series that we could have mentioned here.

One of the more prominent workplace comedies of yesteryear was On The Buses, a cheery British comedy about the goings-on at a bus company. The show’s fondly remembered but looking back at it now, we might consider it the kind of series that will never get made any more due to its sexist attitudes towards women and its other forms of political incorrectness. 

However, the new Netflix comedy Tires, written by and starring stand-up comedian Shane Gillis, actually has much in common with that dated cringefest as the characters in this show are anything but politically correct. They’re sexist, racist, and homophobic, so the series could be considered quite offensive.

 The workplace in this comedy is an auto repair chain which is managed by a guy named Will (Steve Gerben) who has been given the leadership position by his dad. Will’s not very good at his job – in the first episode, he mistakenly orders hundreds of tyres – but at least he tries to do his best, unlike his cousin Shane (Shane Gillis) who also works at the firm and perpetually bullies Will with his constant pranking. 

There are other employees at the auto repair shop but they rarely make much of an impression. These include Kilah (Kilah Fox), a snarky receptionist whose laziness means she is hardly a candidate for employee of the month, and Cal (Chris O’Connor), a rather bland character who seems to be the only employable person working at the firm.

The six episodes in the series follow Will’s attempts to revive the dying business but most of his plans backfire. In one episode, for example, he organizes a bikini car wash by hiring a bunch of glamorous women to help upsell products to his customers. All goes well until Shane tries to hide the scantily clad women in a shipping container so a district manager doesn’t notice their presence.

It’s the kind of farcical scenario that wouldn’t appear out of place in a Carry On film or the aforementioned 70s sitcom. The same can be said about the rest of the writing in this show as it often pushes the boundaries of good taste. References are made to Jewish people as having big noses, Italians are referred to as “wops,” Shane slants his eyes to do a Japanese impersonation, and there are lots of sexual references made about women. 

I’m not sure if these attitudes stem from Gillis himself – he was once fired from Saturday Night Live for comments that were offensive, hurtful, and unacceptable – or whether he’s poking fun at the ignorance of the kinds of ‘bro’ men who can be found within male-dominated industries. Regardless, I get the feeling that he’s trying to be edgy and controversial with his humour, which won’t sit well with those folk who have little time for Jimmy Carr, Andrew Dice Clay, and other shock comedians.

Some of the situations in the show have comic potential but these are often undone by the crassness of the lead characters and a lack of any decent gags in the writing. If you’re a fan of Gillis, I suppose you may find more to tickle your funny bone than I did. But if you’re somebody who is intolerant to constant references to breasts and bums and sick of jokes made at the expense of others, then you might be tempted to stick a nail in Tires and delete it from your watchlist. 

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