Jumat, 06 Agustus 2021

Hacks TV show review: Jean Smart’s biting and hilarious comedy - NEWS.com.au

This is it. Hacks is the 2021 TV show you’ve been waiting for.

Hacks was mercilessly held back from Australian audiences until weeks after its run finished in the US, earning the series 15 Emmy nominations, but at least it was definitely worth the wait.

Starring international treasure Jean Smart, Hacks is a biting, hilarious and insightful comedy laced with genuine pathos, fuelled by its smart writing about generational warfare and compassion between two women who thought they had nothing in common.

Created by Broad City’s Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky, Hacks is one of the strongest debuts of the 2021, and it’s already been renewed for a second season.

Smart plays Deborah Vance a legendary comic with a Las Vegas residency and lucrative merchandise deals. She may be one of the best-known comics, but she’s not immune to changing tastes.

The owner of the Vegas hotel is threatening to cut her nights, in favour of younger acts who can attract a different audience. Deborah, she’s told, isn’t relevant enough.

At the same time, Ava (Hannah Einbinder) is a 25-year-old out-of-work comedy writer who’s been cast out of her industry for an insensitive tweet, putting an end to her career barely before she’s started.

With little choice and a newly minted mortgage, Ava reluctantly agrees to a meeting with Deborah, set up by their mutual agent Jimmy (Downs) without Deborah’s knowledge.

Ava is a chronic oversharer – we will learn so many details about her hook-ups, hang-ups and her menstrual cycle – and she only sees Deborah as a has-been Boomer who sold out to the home shopping network, playing into outdated notions of herself.

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Deborah views Ava as a clueless Gen Z-er with a slack work ethic and no boundaries – she’s also not fond of Ava’s penchant for storing her bras in a hotel ice bucket.

It’s a familiar generational rift and the fractious relationship between the two make for whip-fast traded barbs and a high joke ratio.

If Hacks had been content to let that dynamic play out, just watching two odd couple comics trying to outwit each other, anchored by very funny performances from Smart and Einbinder, it would’ve been enough. You’d have a good time and probably even tell a friend about it.

But Hacks does so much more. It lets that relationship develop, it allows its characters to be surprised by their opposite and in turn it gives the audience 10 balanced and well-crafted episodes with a proper arc and growth.

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Deborah and Ava are both complex and flawed. Deborah’s relationship with her flighty adult daughter DJ (Kaitlin Olson) and with her long-time, loyal lieutenant Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) are not perfect while Ava’s tension with her own mother (Jane Adams) feeds into their usresistance to dependency.

As the season progresses, Ava discovers what it took for Deborah to become successful in an industry rife with misogyny and Deborah confronts the regrets she’s always been too scared to acknowledge from her own past.

Hacks is a beautifully written series about how people use humour to deflect pain but also how other people’s perception of us can be internalised for decades. All that narrative richness in the hands of a performer like Smart makes Deborah Vance is a character for the ages.

Hacks is streaming now on Stan

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https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMimwFodHRwczovL3d3dy5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L3R2L3N0cmVhbWluZy9oYWNrcy10di1zaG93LXJldmlldy1qZWFuLXNtYXJ0cy1iaXRpbmctYW5kLWhpbGFyaW91cy1jb21lZHkvbmV3cy1zdG9yeS9hYThjODE5M2U5ZGNhM2EyZDA2NWQ0NDMyZGU2ZGRjY9IBmwFodHRwczovL2FtcC5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L3R2L3N0cmVhbWluZy9oYWNrcy10di1zaG93LXJldmlldy1qZWFuLXNtYXJ0cy1iaXRpbmctYW5kLWhpbGFyaW91cy1jb21lZHkvbmV3cy1zdG9yeS9hYThjODE5M2U5ZGNhM2EyZDA2NWQ0NDMyZGU2ZGRjYw?oc=5

2021-08-07 03:10:14Z
CBMimwFodHRwczovL3d3dy5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L3R2L3N0cmVhbWluZy9oYWNrcy10di1zaG93LXJldmlldy1qZWFuLXNtYXJ0cy1iaXRpbmctYW5kLWhpbGFyaW91cy1jb21lZHkvbmV3cy1zdG9yeS9hYThjODE5M2U5ZGNhM2EyZDA2NWQ0NDMyZGU2ZGRjY9IBmwFodHRwczovL2FtcC5uZXdzLmNvbS5hdS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L3R2L3N0cmVhbWluZy9oYWNrcy10di1zaG93LXJldmlldy1qZWFuLXNtYXJ0cy1iaXRpbmctYW5kLWhpbGFyaW91cy1jb21lZHkvbmV3cy1zdG9yeS9hYThjODE5M2U5ZGNhM2EyZDA2NWQ0NDMyZGU2ZGRjYw

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