Television

In HBO's new series Hung, Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane) is a high school basketball coach in a Detroit school who has had bad luck. Kidney stones, little house that he grew up in nearly destroyed by fire, no insurance, no money, both teenage kids have moved in with their mother, Jessica (Anne Heche), who left Ray long ago for a dermatologist.

Says Ray, teachers "make a little more than the national average ... about half what it takes to make a normal life. So what do you do? You get a side gig. I've got a more unorthodox skill set."

From the title, you know what that is – Ray becomes a gigolo, with the help of mousy Tanya (Jane Adams).

The show is created by the folks who brought you FX's The Riches, Dmitry Lipkin and Colette Burson. Of Ray, who was once a successful, popular high-school athlete, Lipkin said in a conference call: "We started with this idea that it's about this guy who used to be this quintessential insider. ... What's it like being that guy, and what's it like being that guy 20 years down the road?"

Hollywood long ago learned how to package prostitution for the masses (American Gigolo, Pretty Woman), and with Hung, so has HBO. Ray Drecker is a nice guy who's struggling – just like you (with maybe a key difference).

Hung does not go for the cheap joke. Sex and nudity are fleeting and mostly cartoonish. But Hung is not about sex. This is about the collapse of the American dream and absurd measures that some of the fallen must go to. And that's the problem: We've seen this show already (Weeds, Breaking Bad). We've even seen the movie (American Beauty).

What's new here? Nothing, really. Jane is likable, Adams is, too, and so – believe it or not – is Hung.

That's another problem. Hung needed to be scabrously funny. Instead, it's just middlebrow amusing. Hung

9 p.m. Sunday, HBO. 1 hr.

Print it | Discuss it | E-mail it to a friend