I missed "Hacks" when it first came out in May 2021, but have managed to catch up on it recently. Readers of this newsletter will know I'm a big fan of the 30-minute comedy and this show is a rather nice modern interpretation of the genre.
Deborah Vance (played by Jean Smart,) is a legendary Las Vegas comedian whose act is going stale. Ava (Hannah Einbinder) is a young, aspiring writer who has been cut out of LA life after an ill-judged tweet. (Thankfully, there is little direct focus on this or ‘cancel culture’.) Their mutual agent, Jimmy (Paul W. Downs), sends Ava to Vegas so the pair can collaborate and reignite their careers.
Not surprisingly, things do not go quite to plan. The humour is largely derived from the clashes between two comics, who hail from two very different generations and have very different approaches. Every time they seem to have found an equilibrium something new erupts.
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