THE RIGHT STUFF?

Hugh Laurie is at his best when everything goes all wrong on the hilarious lost-in-space comedy Avenue 5

- KATE HAHN

YOU MAY HAVE experienced a nightmare travel delay in the last year, but rest assured, you had it better than the passengers on HBO's Avenue 5. The astronomically funny social satire from Veep creator Armando Iannucci is set 40 years in the future, when 5,000 people have embarked on an eight-week round-trip luxury cruise to Saturn on the spaceship Avenue 5. In the first season, one outrageous problem after another arose on the vessel owned by narcissistic billionaire Herman Judd (Josh Gad) and allegedly captained by Hugh Laurie's fraud Ryan Clark: from leaked human waste orbiting the ship ("our illuminated circle of turds," as Zach Woods' head of customer relations Matt Spencer dubbed it) to being knocked off course twice. As of the March 2020 finale, their scheduled arrival time back to Earth is eight years. Season 2 picks up five months later, and Ryanwho's really an actor with an affinity for accents, alcohol and throuples-has yet to inform the passengers of the massive setback and accompanying food shortage. They think they're due home in a month.