The Late Hour, the new Bayside workplace comedy that streams its first episode this week, hits a tonal register that contemporary streaming comedy has, with notable consistency, struggled to reach. The show is funny without being aggressive, warm without being sentimental, and patient without being slow.

The setting

The setting is a 24-hour diner in San Francisco's outer Sunset neighbourhood. The location is meaningful: the show takes the place seriously as a place, with the kind of attention to local detail that workplace comedies often skip in favour of the more efficient generic-restaurant setting.

The ensemble

The ensemble cast is the show's foundational strength. The five regular characters have been given enough specific texture in the early episodes to support the long arc that ensemble comedy depends on. None of them is yet a fully-formed character; that is correct for the early episodes, and the gradual filling-in is the kind of work the form rewards.

The comedy

The comedy itself favours the situational over the joke-density model that streaming comedy has often defaulted to. Lines land because the situations have been carefully constructed, not because the writing room has manufactured punchlines at high cadence. The pacing is closer to single-camera network comedy of the early 2000s than to the streaming comedies of the past five years.

What works less well

The early episodes have a slight uncertainty about which character to centre. The writing seems to be testing different anchors before settling, which is normal for first seasons but produces unevenness across the early hours. By the fifth episode, the anchor has clarified.

The verdict

The Late Hour is the kind of comedy that benefits from being given the space to find its audience over time. Whether the streaming-platform model gives it that space is the question that the renewal decision will answer. On the strength of what is on screen, it deserves the renewal.