‘Hung’ smarter than its gimmick

OK, I was all prepared to hate “Hung” (10 p.m., Sunday, HBO). Its story about Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane), a down-on-his-luck high school basketball coach who turns to male prostitution to make ends meet, seemed so desperately contrived, so snarky and pretentious, so Showtime.

I’m happy to be proven wrong. “Hung” uses its rather outrageous setup to drag viewers into a nuanced drama about middle-class decline and middle-aged disappointment. These are the kinds of grand themes normally reserved for serious fiction – the kinds of books that are so difficult to capture on screen and that rarely find audiences when they do.

In the eventful first hour, we discover that Drecker’s shallow first wife, Jessica (Anne Heche, in a memorably over-the-top performance), has left him for a short, rich dermatologist (Eddie Jemison).

This is a very smart and worthwhile show hiding behind the inverted fig leaf of a porn-worthy premise. The show’s title and hook will no doubt inspire a lot of stupid commentary and witless double entendres from all of the usual, stupid and witless sources in an increasingly juvenile and tabloid media. But once you get past all that, “Hung” is a smart, risque and thought-provoking series, the kind we used to expect from HBO.