Alan Ball Strikes Again
A new HBO series from the True Blood creator
Alongside David Simon (The Wire, The Deuce) and David Chase (The Sopranos), Oscar and Emmy–winner Alan Ball is one of HBO‘s most revered creative minds. Simply put, the legendary cable network just wouldn’t be the same without his incredibly original shows.
The 2001 series Six Feet Under, which ran for five seasons, had a wonderfully morbid and unique premise: every show began with the demise of someone who ended being interred at the Fisher family funeral home. Starring Peter Krause and Michael C. Hall as the brothers who have very different ideas on how to run the business of death, Six Feet Under remains one of the most exciting shows on HBO.
We can we say about True Blood that hasn’t already been said? Ball‘s sexy vampire series, which ran from 2008 to 2014 set the bar very high for future shows about blood-sucking and hard-core fucking. Based on Charlene Harris‘s series of novels about Sookie (Anna Paquin) and her terribly hot romance with her 173-year-old undead lover Bill (Stephen Moyer), True Blood never failed to shock. Needless to say, there’s a lot of necking going on.
Ball is back with his newest, Here and Now, starring Holly Hunter and Tim Robbins as parents of adopted children from all around the world, who currently reside in Portland, Oregon. They may seem unusual, but they’re still a loving family unit, complete with all the drama, tension, and sweetness that comes with the territory. Jerrika Hinton, Raymond Lee, and Daniel Zovatto star as the three adopted children (now adults), while Sosie Bacon, daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, appears as Kristen, the only biological child of the two parents. All hell breaks loose when one of the kids starts seeing things—leading to being treated by a psychologist who happens to be Muslim.
The show aims to be an All in the Family-esque cross section of 21st-century Americana: cross-generational and multi-ethnic. And with Alan Ball in charge, you just know there’s going to be a healthy dose of dark humor.
The 10-episode series, Here and Now, premieres February 11 on HBO.
