Third-episode verdict: Hung

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 2

Three episodes into Hung and it’s turning out that the everyday story of a guy with a big dick who turns to prostitution to make ends meet (ho ho) isn’t about as much as I thought it was about. At first glance, it looked like it was a caustic look at gender relations.

But now, I’m not so sure. It seems more like Dmitry Lipkin’s last show, The Riches, and is merely a cynical look at what happens to not desperately bad people when they’re down on their luck. Here, we have a teacher who would be a male prostitute, and a poet who would be his pimp. Except neither’s very good at it, and they’re both getting shafted (ho ho) by everyone else. Are they supposed to toughen up or find their soft interiors and each other? Does the man need to embrace his femininity to succeed, while the woman embrace her masculinity to triumph?

I’m not even sure the show’s going to attempt to answer that question. Yet, I’m inclined to hang around to find out. It’s well made, relatively engaging, and thankfully short at a half-hour per episode. There’s the occasional touch of Fight Club soul-searching and social satire. And it might just answer those questions it’s raised in the end.

But it needs to get a move on. 

Carusometer rating: 2
Rob’s prediction: Will probably make it to the end of the season, and even get renewed. But it needs to find its feet soon or those chances will begin to dwindle.

 

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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