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| /HBO |
There’s
not a more consistently-excellent lineup of half-hours on a network than at
HBO.
HBO
will be launching the second seasons of Getting
On and The Comeback, both of
which have a lot to live up to. Last television season, despite the news that
Christopher Guest, Stephen Merchant and Mike Judge all had new comedies coming
to the pay-cable network, it was a little hospital-set series from the creators
of Big Love that really landed,
creatively-speaking. Getting On earned
little-to-no promotion and arrived with very little fanfare, yet its raucous
comedy and warm-heartedness worked beautifully from start to finish. And The Comeback, the Lisa Kudrow vehicle
that premiered in 2005 to mixed reviews and was canceled after its debut
season, is roaring back a decade later. Cringe-inducing and uncomfortable as it
may be, The Comeback is a brilliant
show-business satire with a never-better Kudrow as its awkward, hilarious
anchor – and if early teasers are any indication, it hasn’t lost any of its
edge despite the years that have passed.
Other
than that, HBO is currently working on the fourth seasons of Veep, by a mile the best straight-up
comedy on television – also featuring Julia Louis-Dreyfus in one of the medium’s
best continuing performances, regardless of genre – and Girls, which fluctuates in quality but always presents a distinct worldview
and fresh, vital perspectives on youth and friendship. And while I had some
issues with the debut seasons of Silicon Valley
and (especially) Looking, they have
loads of potential and finished strong (and other critics are even warmer to them).
We did lose the two-season wonder that was Mike White’s Enlightened last year – absolutely that year’s best season of
television – but with everything else the network has going, it’s easily
forgivable. (Sidenote: I’ll have a lot more written up on all of these shows in
our end-of-year report.)
Today,
HBO put in motion two potential half-hour series, ordering a project from Kari Lizer
(creator of The New Adventures of Old Christine)
and Kyra Sedgwick (Emmy-winning star of The
Closer) and a follow-up pilot from White. Lizer has sold nearly a dozen
pilots to networks since Old Christine
went off the air in 2010, but not one has made it to series. Old Christine was ridiculously-underappreciated,
the kind of broadly-hilarious and quietly-incisive multi-camera comedy that has
been astonishingly rare throughout this new century. Lizer is a little too
smart and oddball for where network comedy is right now – if you want to know
where that is, read Andy Greenwald’s fantastic piece here – so her switching
over to HBO (new home of fellow too-smart-for-network-TV artist Louis-Dreyfus,
who superbly top-lined Old Christine)
is great news. And White, who’s already written one of the decade’s best shows
and has so many other terrific, underappreciated works under his belt (including
standout episodes of Freaks and Geeks
and a great film in Year of the Dog)
is someone I wanted on television sooner rather than later. Let’s hope these
projects turn out as strong as their pedigrees suggest, and that they make it
to air.
Next
week, we’ll be writing about the return of The
Comeback and Getting On, as well
as an HBO miniseries we’re very excited for, Olive Kitteridge.
News /Deadline