Haven't had a chance to comment on the new HBO series, "Hung," that premiered last week. Since HBO CEO Chris Albrecht's departure in 2007, I've been interested to see what the new execs would come up with. "Hung" so far seems promising, better than a show centered around a man's big penis might sound.
I think it would be too easy to group "Hung" with other shows about white suburbanites side-stepping the law in pursuit of alternate income sources. "Hung" is about a middle class guy Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane) who is trying to get by after losing nearly everything in the pilot episode: his wife remarries, house burns down, kids jump ship. He can't find the money to repair his house so he decides to pitch a tent in his backyard and call it home. And oh yeah, he's a high school gym teacher coaching a basketball team on a losing streak.
"Hung" isn't just about the plight of Drecker but is also about the post-industrial landscape of Detroit. Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways, About Schmidt) makes some interesting directorial choices in the pilot episode. The show begins and ends with shots of Detroit: from a bulldozed stadium to a homeless man plodding along a street wide enough to be a highway. These shots avoid being annoyingly heavy-handed because of their length and their attention to silence. I can remember a still shot of a gutted warehouse that carries on long enough to capture the small movement of a wind-blown scrap of paper. The same meditative camera movement extends to the scenes containing characters and dialogue. During a post-coital moment between Ray and Tanya (Jane Adams), the camera lingers on the black cursive lettering of her tattoo spelling out "Proust" as she reads him the poetry of Rumi, and in that momentary "Proust" pause we know exactly everything we need to know about what kind of "artist" Tanya is.
"Hung" might seem to be covering old terrain but it does so with a fresh eye for detail, that will keep me watching in the weeks to come.
