Hung arrived in the UK with plenty of hype behind it from the US and the knowledge that it had done well enough to get a second season. The basic plot summary of it is that a high-school teacher gets down on his luck and decides to supplement his income by utilising his most obvious "talent" by working as a male escort with ladies lined up by his failed-poet acquaintance. Fans will tell you that to summarise it in such a base way is to do it a disservice and indeed I had hoped that this would be the case because it is HBO and it did appear from early on to be connected to the real world in terms of the characters, the economy and other themes.
Having finished the season I do have to say that I quite enjoyed it. It was mostly engaging, occasionally amusing and had solid characters that I had an interest in. I'll stress again that I liked it because the problems I had with it were not with what it "did" but rather with what I felt it "didn't" do. What I thought was missing was the obvious step to making comments on wider issues, either through the general plot or through the characters. It constantly alludes to the bigger picture and it has character interactions that are interesting and have potential as part of having engaging characters but it never seems to make these things stick and become part of the show so much as they are in the distant background. In short I never felt through the whole season that the potted one-line summary stopped applying. Contrast this with The Sopranos (and yes I am well aware they are very different shows); the "mobster sees shrink" potted summary is valid but very, very quickly the show become much more than that one sentence. With Hung I just couldn't get anywhere with it because it never seemed to push out of confines of the pitch.
Thing is though, is that on its own terms I did still quite enjoy it. It is broadly humorous and the narrative is engaging, it is just that it wasn't funny enough to make me love it as a comedy, not engaging enough for me to love it for the story and not clever enough for me to love it as both – it just "is". This isn't down to the cast though because they are mostly great. Thomas Jane in particular makes his character work and it is clear that a more intelligent and layered script would be easily delivered by him. Adams is a pain as a character but she delivers it really well while Creskoff's performance may be overblown but in turns works well to bring out more of Adams' character by way of conflict and contrast. I wasn't really feeling Heche but then Ray's family as a thread didn't work the best for me.
Hung is a strange show as it has the potential to be outrageously excessive and funny while also being able to operate as a microcosm for the wider problems in an America hit by recession. It does a little bit of both (which is why I liked it) but never enough or good enough to really make me love it. The cast are good and it is well enough put together to be entertaining but I just found myself waiting for it to be better than it was or do more than it did. I know a second season is coming but normally I would only follow a show is "more of the same" would be a good thing (obviously with the hope of improvements etc) but with Hung I have to say that it wouldn't be. A solid and engaging little show but one that failed to excite me or make me love it.