Hung, the newest show from HBO original programming, premiered Sunday night.
Filmed and set in Detroit, Hung opens with shots of for-sale signs, American flags, and Tiger Stadium coming down. It’s an abandoned-building travelogue. The voiceover by the protagonist Ray Drecker (played by Thomas Jane) explains: “Everything’s falling apart, and it all starts right here in Detroit, the headwaters of a river of failure.”
Ray is a basketball coach and history teacher at West Lakefield High School. Struggling to make ends meet as he raises twin teens, battles an ex (Anne Heche), and watches as his childhood home burns, Ray is feeling the pinch. He used to be on the way to something great: The former sports star and Atlanta Braves signee was “magical, a king, popular,” his ex-wife, Jessica, tells him. An injury derailed his athletic career, and, one suspects, the intervening years have not been rosy before the show starts, right at the nadir.
But, against this backdrop of the dispossessed and the repossessed, Hung is a comedy. The jumping off point is right there in the show’s name: Jessica — a former homecoming cheerleader beauty queen — has to admit that even if Ray used to be magical, he still is hung. (i.e., he’s well-endowed in the swimsuit area, if you catch my drift.)
