Hap & Leonard Season 2 Review

The Sundance Channel may be falling apart as one of the few sites for indepenent films, but as a source for original programming, it keeps improving. Importing a fair amount of its broadcasts - the Italian crime series Gomorrah and the wry British comedy The A Word, one of  its returning series couldn't be more American: the Texas set series Hap & Leonard.

Based on a series of well-crafted mystery novels by the veteran fiction writer Joe R. Lansdale (the series is subtitled Mucho Mojo, the next novel in the series) the title characters are two poor Texas, ex-Vietnam vets way south of the poverty line in the 1980s: Hap Arnold (British actor James Purefoy), white and dirt-poor in every sense of the word, and Leonard Pine (Michael K. Williams, in another one of those roles you can't imagine anyone else playing) a black, gay man in one of the worst places to be both. Recovering from the adventures in the first season, in which Hap's ex-wife ended up dying, Leonard is currently living in his late Uncle Chester's house, where he literally trips over trouble, when he finds the corpse of a boy in his floor.

As is their want, trying to do the right thing just gets them in trouble with the law again, where they are saved by a beauteous lawyer, Florida (Tiffany Mack) who happens to be the relative of neighbor. But as always seems to be the way with them, things quickly spiral out of control, when Leonard ends up in prison because of his behavior towards one of his neighbors. (He pissed on a drug dealer's head. The guy had it coming.) Leonard spends the better part of his weekend being wailed upon by the cops, and escapes further incarceration only by some none-too-subtle nudging by Hap towards the judge who he really has cause to loathe. All they have to do is stay out of trouble. Then they find out that Chester's oldest friend knew about the dead boy, and also may have known just how deep the secrets go. Unfortunately, he ends up driving into the river by the end of last night's episode.

Admittedly, Hap & Leonard  could be considered guilty of some egregious padding as the average length of one of their mysteries is just under 250 pages. And considering how many characters keep migrating to the front of the series, you wonder sometimes whether its going to pay off. (It's only halfway through episode two that we find out just why Brian Dennehy is on the cast list.) But the atmosphere is so well done, and often incredibly, morbidly funny that you realize just what a gem this series can be at times. It's definitely an acquired taste, but like chicken-fried steak, it has its own appeal. And considering that Landsale has written six other novels in the series, this show could be around for awhile. I really hope it is.

My score: 3.75 stars.