The weirdest (and sometimes best) HBO shows are on Friday nights
Chances are, you’ve probably been missing out on some of HBO’s smartest, strangest shows.
The prestige cable network has typically reserved its most accessible, awards-friendly comedies for Sunday nights: “Veep,” “Silicon Valley” and the newly returned “Insecure” among them.
But recently, the channel has cultivated a small slate of offbeat fare on Friday nights, ranging from idiosyncratic late-night shows to niche comedies aimed at twentysomethings.
“Friday is an interesting night,” says HBO’s executive VP of programming Nina Rosenstein. Anchored by “Real Time With Bill Maher,” “it’s a good night to try these new formats and introduce new talent who may be a little out of the mainstream. Sunday nights are kind of our big, splashy shows and these are our shows that are a little more genre-breaking.”
Here are three of HBO’s new and recent Friday-night offerings that should be on your radar.
“Random Acts of Flyness”
Like “Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas,” another freshman series that aired Fridays earlier this year, “Random” tackles social and cultural issues in an unconventional late-night setting. But while Cenac’s show is primarily a deep dive into the problems plaguing law enforcement in America today, “Random” creator Terence Nance’s scope is much wider, using animation, music and documentary approaches to explore themes of blackness, sexuality, police violence and death. It’s an urgent, fantastical fever dream unlike anything else on TV right now, with Jon Hamm — dryly satirizing so-called “white thoughts” in the first episode — as you’ve never seen him before. (Fridays, 1 a.m.)
“Animals”
If Mickey Mouse had a drinking problem and Garfield was into bondage, you’d probably get something akin to “Animals,” which just kicked off its third season. The crudely animated comedy was conceived by newcomers Phil Matarese and Mike Luciano, and produced by the prolific sibling duo of Mark and Jay Duplass, who have helped woo an extraordinary guest roster to voice characters.
This season, comedians and actresses including Tracy Morgan, Johnny Knoxville, Edie Falco and Lucy Liu pop in to play cats, dogs, pigeons, rats and other city-dwelling critters in a series of loosely related, deceptively dark vignettes. (Fridays, 12:30 a.m.)
“High Maintenance”
This is stoner comedy of the highest grade. Adapted from the Vimeo web series of the same name by husband-and-wife duo Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld, its HBO incarnation follows “The Guy,” a nameless weed deliveryman (Sinclair) in New York as he bikes his product to a colourful cast of cannabis-smoking characters. Hannibal Buress, Lena Dunham and Dan Stevens are among the biggest names who have appeared on the show, which aired Fridays last winter and offers wry, unexpectedly poignant glimpses into people’s lives. It’s been renewed for a third season, which is expected to première early next year. (Streaming on HBO Go/HBO Now)