Never mind the porn-y title.
It’s true, “Hung,” debuting Sunday at 8 p.m. on HBO, is the adjectival reference to exactly what you expect. But beyond the male anatomical tease, the hour imparts an amazingly topical exploration of the national mood.
The series is a knowing snapshot of these recessionary times: Detroit, shuttered; General Motors, max’d out like an AmEx card. Desperate Americans, who had banked on a more secure future, are left to dream up creative solutions — Happiness Consultant, anyone?
Dmitry Lipkin (“The Riches”) and his wife, Colette Burson, are co- creators and co-executive producers of “Hung.” They’re onto something meaningful here, something rather profound, in the way the FX dramedy “The Riches” was profound when it wasn’t silly. It, too, was a lamentation on a fallen empire.
So where’s the beef?
The anatomical reference of the series title is just the catchy entree into a story of middle-age angst — divorce, dead-end job, an aging former jock in a time of closing opportunities for the have-nots.
Ray Drecker, played by Thomas Jane (“The Punisher”), was big man on campus — no pun — in high school, and the future looked bright. He married his high-school sweetheart (Anne Heche), played ball briefly for the Atlanta Braves and then, after an injury, returned to the Detroit suburbs to take a teaching job at his old high school and coach the basketball team.
Now he’s divorced, his ex-wife is married to a wealthy dermatologist, and he’s living in his parents’ rundown rambler on a lake. He’s battling for his kids, a pair of outside-the-norm Goth and geek teens, Sianoa Smit-McPhee (“As the Bell Rings”) as daughter Darby, and Charlie Saxton (“The Lovely Bones”) as son Damon.
When the house burns down, Ray is desperate.
Encouraged to catch the entrepreneurial spirit, he turns to his biggest asset. The fact is, Ray is well endowed.
The running joke makes HBO’s “Hung” the equivalent of Showtime’s “Secret Life of a Call Girl,” but with the grim economic overlay.
The director routinely plays with the title’s offscreen presence to create enhanced expectations. What the viewer imagines when Ray Drecker unzips is obviously more dramatic than anything even HBO could put on-screen.
A dour feminist named Tanya (Jane Adams of “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) teams up with Ray, bringing her bookish sensibility and marketing smarts to bear as his pimp. Ray’s attitude, meanwhile, is rather blank and clueless as he fumbles into his new profession.
Together Ray and Tanya embark on a business in which they will explore women’s needs and desires, the intersection of sex and money, the loneliness of life in general, the tension between socio-economic classes and the particular confusion of these financially insecure times.
And sex. Clearly, “Hung” contains scenes that are more explicit than what’s on the commercial broadcast networks. Then again, it’s less explicit than the suggestive commercial for the product KY Intense that runs during Letterman on CBS.
While there is the requisite skin and language to distinguish the project as made-for-premium-cable, even the hooker scenes in “Hung” are not all R-rated romps. Margo Martindale (Nina on “The Riches”) steals an episode as a plump, depressed, middle-aged woman who isn’t at all what Ray expected. She is sad, with mature emotional needs. And she slowly begins to express herself as Ray listens.
When it delves into such quiet corners, “Hung” has much more going for it than shock value.
While HBO struggles to find its next signature series to succeed “The Sopranos,” this hour will do nicely. “Hung” may not have the staying power of that mob drama, but it is similarly intent on ferreting out uncomfortable truths about a changing society while entertaining viewers with the adventures of an illicit breadwinner.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
