Every dude has, at one time or another, daydreamed about making a decent living from his wang. For a down-on-his-luck high-school basketball coach named Ray (Thomas Jane), the dream is about to become a reality. Ray—once a teenage sports star with seemingly limitless possibilities not directly related to his johnson—is divorcing by his wife (Anne Heche), has been abandoned by his kids, has lost his house to a fire and is otherwise bummed out. After attending a self-help class in which he is told to use what he does have to be successful, he realizes what logic dictates: He should use his oversized unit in the world’s oldest vocation as a male prostitute. Ray is bound to get in pickles over his pickle, juggling his duties as a high-school basketball coach with his new sex gig and enlisting a struggling lady poet (Jane Adams) as a pimp.
Jane, an actor best known as the Punisher, is comical as the well-endowed loser. Hung is novel in that it focuses on the plight of a subgroup that everyone thought had it made—high-end gigolos—but evidently has problems just like the rest of us. In that way, the show might do for the physically gifted what Quantum Leap did for time travelers—namely, show us that it’s not all fun and games.
Hung premieres June 28 at 10pm on HBO.