David Milch is back in business with HBO, this time writing Luck, a drama pilot, to be directed by Michael Mann, about horse racing. There’s no guarantee that the pilot will become a series—since making Deadwood and John from Cincinnati, Milch made the HBO cop pilot Last of the Ninth, which never made it to series. But Milch, who’s never been shy about talking up his history with gambling and other vices, seems like the man for the subject, and face it, if David Milch and Michael Mann say they’re willing to team up on a show for you, you don’t ask many questions.
This does seem like a good time to look at where HBO’s headed. On the one hand, how quickly the network has gone from 2007-08, when it seemed practically about to run out of new series material, to the point where it has so many projects one wonders where it will schedule them. (See halfway into the video above for some glimpses at HBO’s 2010 programming.) But there are a lot of familiar names in the credits.
If there’s one quibble I have with the network’s bounty of new shows (many of which I haven’t seen yet), it’s that it would be nice to see some new voices on the drama side. David Simon made The Wire; this spring, he debuts New Orleans drama Treme. Tom Hanks and company have The Pacific, a sequel to Band of Brothers, in March. Sopranos producer Terence Winter debuts Boardwalk Empire (with Martin Scorsese) in the fall. Alan Ball (Six Feet Under) delivered a big hit with True Blood. David Chase is making a miniseries for the network, about the film business. And now Milch returns with another pilot for the network. Once you’re in the HBO family, it seems, you’re in.
Now, all these people made great shows for HBO, so I don’t begrudge them another shot. I just want more, because I’m greedy, and the network has benefited from bringing in new voices, as it did with Big Love. (On the comedy side, it’s spread the spotlight more widely, resulting in shows like the winning Bored to Death from novelist Jonathan Ames.) At risk of sounding P.C., it’d be nice to see more women creating HBO dramas (even if I’m the only one who misses Cynthia Mort’s Tell Me You Love Me).
On the other hand, Game of Thrones—the fantasy saga whose pilot is now in postproduction—would be an ambitious series from a non-usual-suspect if it gets picked up. And I’m glad to see that, following the surprise success of True Blood, that HBO isn’t just trying to look for clones of that show. (You could argue that Thrones is an effort to replicate its genre success, but—at least in the books it’s based on—it’s much more in the vein of Deadwood-style darkness and dirt than the sexy, escapist True Blood.)
In any case, I’d watch anything Milch attempted, and I have high, high hopes for Luck. But I also look forward to some fresh horses for HBO.
