Reading about Here and Now, it’ll only take you about thirty seconds to realize HBO already has their next great series in the can and ready to go next February; the 11th, that is. Honestly, this one shot tells me all I need to know.
If you need more convincing, the show is created, written and directed by — at least one episode (and Game of Thrones‘ Jeremy Podeswa will also helm an hour) — the same brilliant mind who brought us Six Feet Under and True Blood — Alan Ball. Our small screens haven’t been the same since he left and frankly, we’ll feel complete again only after his return.
The leads are played by Holly Hunter (one of my all time favorite actresses) and Tim Robbins, and from that gif above, we already know they’ll be one of the most entertaining television couples ever seen. I mean, Hunter could stand around not saying a word to Robbins, make faces or blow bubbles, and I’d watch. Here, she’s playing attorney, Audrey Black and Robbins is her husband (and a philosophy professor), Greg Black.
Ball’s brought in a diverse cast, including Jerrika Hinton as the couple’s adopted daughter, Ashley; Daniel Zovatto and Raymond Lee as adopted sons, Ramon and Duc; and Sosie Bacon (Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick’s daughter) as Audrey and Greg’s biological daughter, Kristen. The series is described as a “provocative and darkly comic meditation on the disparate forces polarizing present-day American culture, as experienced by the members of a progressive multi-ethnic family — a contemporary Muslim family, headed by a psychiatrist” … and knowing Alan Ball, it’ll be the perfect wry observation on this American life we’re all trying to work through, right now.
Here’s the teaser, released earlier this month.
Meet me over at HBO, February 11th. You know you want to.
