Ranking Every HBO Drama Series From Worst To Best

In attempting to make an achingly contemporary drama, Alan Ball instead made a show that, in spite of a high quality cast and selection of solid ideas, was often intensely irritating. Here And Now stars Tim Robbins and Holly Hunter as a married couple with a multiracial adopted family, focussing on all their myriad, zeitgeisty issues.

Ball is at the best of times not a subtle writer, and he’s at his infuriating worst here. There’s no modern hot button issue he doesn’t feel obliged to chuck into his narrative, from sexuality and gender to race relations, identity politics and mental illness. It’s as though he knew from the off he was only going to get one season to play with, and accordingly lobbed everything against the wall at once.

Some of it works - Robbins’ unravelling is handled with empathy and the young cast of often-underrepresented backgrounds do get to tackle issues of genuine import - but the cavalcade of pressing matters often dips into melodrama or stuff happening for the sake of shoehorning in another pressing concern.