Manafonistas

„Sundance’s buddy drama Hap and Leonard is the kind of series where a beautiful woman who’s also trouble uses her wiles to lure a down-at-his-heels ex-husband into a criminal scheme. More importantly, though, it’s the kind of series that doesn’t get around to the proposition until nearly 15 minutes into the pilot. First we get scenes of the anti-hero and his buddy getting laid off from their job on a rose-bush plantation and hanging out and busting each other’s chops in the small woodland home they share, followed by a lovely sequence where the hero and his ex sit in a window and drink coffee while the sound of country music on an AM radio mingles with the noise of rain pattering on the roof, followed by a slow dance in the kitchen.“

(vulture, first paragraph, no spoilers)

 

„Bubbling just underneath all the easygoing byplay and occasional bursts of mayhem is a dead-on accurate portrait of race relations in the former Confederate states 30 years ago, which is not necessarily something you expect or need from a crime series, but is welcome nonetheless. The N-word is bandied about pretty freely here, but always in a specific cultural context, and it’s juxtaposed against the utopian-left pieties and New Age cliché-speak of many of the show’s white characters — especially the criminals, whose obsession with making a big score and retiring to a life of leisure mirrors the progress of many counterculture-minded whites as they transformed from hippies to yuppies. (The Big Lebowski was smart about this, too.) Hap and Leonard is a smart show that doesn’t preen about how smart it is. Its complexities are sunk deep in the texture, and you have to dive for them.“

(vulture, last paragraph, no spoilers)