Set against a late ‘80s, North Texas backdrop, Hap and Leonard – a new SundanceTV drama based on the eponymous series of novels by Joe Lansdale – is at once a pulpy genre experiment, a low-key character study and a blunt conversation piece, balancing playful humor with gory violence and political intensity with understated emotion. At six brisk hours, its first season is an unusual concoction, to be sure; executive producers Jim Mickle and Nick Damici freely jump around in tone and story, stitching together disparate threads with their distinct sensibility. And the method works, however roughly. An exemplary product of the television business as it stands today, Hap and Leonard is an idea odd and imperfect enough to steer traditional content distributors away, but also of sufficient intrigue and potential to, thankfully, be able to see the light of day.
This is not a low-rent project that gets by on conception alone, either. Hap and Leonard has star-power from top to bottom, enviable production values and an atmosphere that’s easy to sink into, without it feeling overdeveloped or suffocating. Its primary asset is more fundamental, in the way it’s able to shake up familiar formulae through a pair of dynamic lead characters. Hap (James Purefoy) is a Vietnam Draft dodger, a disillusioned wanderer crushed by the broken promises of his ‘60s youth; Leonard (Michael K. Williams) is a war veteran without the pride to show for it, a gay black man wrestling with an on-and-off romantic relationship and left to care for his bigoted dying uncle (Henry G. Sanders). Hap and Leonard work rose fields together, with their jobs steadily in-transfer to cheap immigrant labor; they share a rich, complicated, surprising history, one that unfolds elegantly through the season’s six-hour run. And as Hap and Leonard begins, the two men are presented with an exciting if foreboding opportunity by Hap’s ex-girlfriend, Trudy (Christina Hendricks): help Howard (Bill Sage), her new beau, and his band of hippie-heisters find chests-full of money buried in a nearby river, and split the cash evenly.
Merely in describing the series’ bones, its many narrative strands are already put into evidence. This is to Hap and Leonard’s absolute benefit, as its clarity of character, period, location and plot permits a looser engagement with the material, and lifts the need for a narrower focus. It’s most comfortable and accessible as a frothy genre piece; Damici and Mickle, a writing-directing team on four well-received features, are experienced in moody cinematic fare, between the spooky Mulberry Street and the Texas crime film Cold in July. Hap and Leonard borrows from both, with psychopathic villains plucked straight out of classic horror and the aesthetic of Texan noir expertly recalibrated for the small-screen. The show is delightfully atmospheric, its strict sense of place complemented by a music mix of twangs and booms, and by cinematography that balances lush greens with swampy rivers. These audio-visual mechanics feed nicely into the main story, which predictably but also smartly builds in tension and in stakes. There’s a body count and plenty of blood splatter by season’s end, but never in sacrifice of character or mood. And while some action-heavy dramas can turn redundant very quickly in their depictions of violence and gunfire, Hap and Leonard manages to tighten the noose and accelerate the pace at just the right moments.
Yet – without minimizing the solid execution or entertainment value of it all – this is pretty minimal for a quality cable drama series, especially one airing on a network as creatively consistent as Sundance. Where Hap and Leonard both gets more compelling and less comfortable is in its relatively abstract incarnations. Again, this is a good thing; Mickle and Damici tackle complex socio-political phenomena through thick dialogue and broad characterizations, and the result is often unsteadily provocative. Racial epithets are hurled with destabilizing ease; the series’ historical perspective is so steeped in liberal-oriented cynicism that it verges on antipathetic.
The writing is unapologetically pessimistic. Hap and Leonard’s most fascinating – and, at the risk of overstatement, intellectually satisfying – element is the juxtaposition of Leonard, an embodiment of the unfulfilled promises of the “progressive revolution” in which he came of age, and the white radical liberals seeking to “change the world” with underground money. When the group turns on Hap and Leonard after some of the cash is found soiled, one henchman tells a chained-up Leonard that he “understands” why he’s angry. “You’ll never understand my anger,” goes Leonard’s vehement reply, an encapsulation in many ways of the deeper anger that runs through the narrative. From episode one, a portly white county judge candidate’s campaign posters litter Hap and Leonard’s landscape; they seem, above all, to indicate the inevitable direction of the country in tandem with the delusional revolutionaries’ belief in sweeping change. And there’s Leonard, grunting bemusedly at the group’s lofty ideals as they slowly descend into fatal compromises – kidnapping, betrayal, drug-dealing – all in the service of a “cause.” Leonard, Hap and by extension the audience know how that one goes.
At times, this bitter perspective gets the best of Damici and Mickle. In the show’s very construct, the promise of pending catastrophe damages the credibility of Howard and his troupe, and consequently weighs the balance too heavily in Hap and Leonard’s favor. Howard particularly is drawn as such a buffoon, his idealism so nakedly ill-thought-out, that his connection to Trudy never makes sense, and his goal of political transformation – which Hap and Leonard realizes as historically critical – is viewed as exceedingly idiotic. The show thrives when it allows itself greater complexity, an attribute represented best in the character of Trudy. As aided by Hendricks’ exceptional performance, which staggeringly tilts between sexy and tragic, Trudy’s aversion to logic is made convincing through a tight focus on the fog of failure – on her blindingly encouraging Hap to dodge and do time during Vietnam, without having the strength to wait for him. Her obsession with having a “cause” sharply contrasts with Hap’s skepticism, and effectively blurs the line between passion and pragmatism.
Hap and Leonard has a lot to say in that regard, exposing how a generation of faded activists comes up against its younger, fresher face. Talk of corporate power and cheap labor and capitalist dominance feels especially prescient; in tough dialogue and challenging personalities, the show bleakly traces lines of thought and mood from the ‘60s to the ‘80s. Hap and Leonard, dispirited, lonely people left in the wake of mass social collectivism, walk those paths without a destination in mind. Their comfort with each other is borne out of an unfortunately mutual understanding; Purefoy, with an inconsistent accent but a hearty presence, and Williams, whose tart line readings and melancholy edge are startlingly appropriate for the time and place, sell that sense of isolation. You feel a mythology around the two characters, even with their source material entirely out of context. That’s the great thing about Hap and Leonard: it’s a quippy Texan fable on the surface, albeit one anchored by the weight of historical disappointment. Certainly, if our current political climate is any indication, some witty pushback on promises unchecked can, in the right moment, go a very long way.
Grade: B+