Avenue 5 (Seasons 1–2)

Avenue 5 (2020) is an HBO sci-fi comedy series you can watch online on iFILM. Creator Armando Iannucci — the mind behind Veep and The Death of Stalin — set his trademark study of incompetence in charge adrift in space. Hugh Laurie plays Captain Ryan Clark of the luxury cruise ship Avenue 5; Josh Gad co-stars as the clueless billionaire who owns the whole operation.

A technical malfunction knocks the ship off course. What was supposed to be an eight-week solar cruise is now a three-year ordeal. Eight hundred passengers in penthouse suites, a crew that's mostly decorative, and an owner whose crisis management consists of making things visibly worse. Captain Clark, it turns out, is not quite what his uniform suggests — and that detail drives the first half of the series.

Iannucci's comedy has always been about people who have power and no idea what to do with it; space just makes the escape routes fewer. The show is broader than Veep, but Laurie's performance — poised, panicked, utterly unconvincing — makes it worth the ride. Stream all seasons of Avenue 5 (2020) online on iFILM.