After getting blown away by the fourth episode, all I can say is–whoa what a show! Although the series can be confusing and wandering in the early episodes, if you give this nag a chance, she’s going to race into your heart.
Even though I never even liked horseracing, this drama, set in that world, has got me hooked and betting the farm. I was a little skeptical and sometimes confused in the early going. It’s tough juggling a big cast of characters, and there’s a lot of racing lingo to decipher, and the plot is almost non-existant.
http://youtu.be/biLtGeSDjzY
But it all starts to come together in episode four with an especially stirring race that will send your heart racing and your eyes misting. My TV pal and fave reviewer, Alan Sepinwall (see my post about him here) tipped me off to the show and can describe it much better than I, so I’ll turn the show over to him…
Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte head to the track in HBO’s LUCK
by Alan Sepinwall
One of the great things about art, if you’re good at what you do — and few in TV history have been better at it than David Milch and Michael Mann, the chief writer and director, respectively, behind HBO’s horseracing drama “Luck” — is that you can use your art to take something you care deeply about and make other people care deeply too, even if they never expected to.
I have no sentimental attachment to horseracing and could only vaguely follow many of the show’s early storylines about Pick Six line-ups and claiming races. Yet I became caught up in the world of the track, and the passions of the people who gravitate towards it, thanks to the artistry of Milch (“Deadwood,” “NYPD Blue”), Mann (“Miami Vice,” “Crime Story”) and their many gifted collaborators, including a cast headed by Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte.
“Luck” (which begins its 9-episode season Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO) is a show about a sport that has seen far, far better days. The Santa Anita racetrack where most of the action takes place is usually 3/4 empty. The people who hang around the track — trainers and vets, gamblers and owners, reporters and jockeys — all can tell that they should probably be plying their trade somewhere else, and yet there is nowhere else they would rather be. Continue reading
