It hit the Vegas Strip running. Since it crashed on to our screens in 2021, Hacks has been a critical darling. This tale of a pair of extremely different comics who end up working together takes the classic sitcom set up, injects it with some HBO gloss, and gives us a grippingly watchable central relationship that is frequently adorable – while also featuring some of TV’s most venomous putdowns. It has a 99% Rotten Tomatoes score, 12 Emmy wins, including outstanding comedy series in 2024, and has propelled its cast into the stratosphere. And it’s about to enter its final season ever.
There’s nothing new about its ending, though. “The concept came to us in 20 … 15?” says Paul W Downs, who created the show with his wife, Lucia Aniello, and their creative partner Jen Statsky. They even had the ending in mind at the first meeting at which they pitched the show to HBO in 2019. “We really had it fully fleshed out, including the final episode, which we pitched to most networks.”
Viewers will know Downs as Jimmy. He’s the wide-eyed, plate-spinning, put-upon agent who initially suggests that comics Deborah and Ava work together, and constantly finds himself surrounded by ridiculous people in ridiculous situations, only very occasionally being at the centre of them himself. He flails and firefights at every turn, yet still manages to stay immaculately dressed, and facilitate and encourage ideas including movie pitches, sitcom ideas and a career-defining standup show (the focal point of this season) that propel the story along. Which is probably appropriate given his real-life role with the show.
Hacks first began life when Downs and Aniello met as members of the Upright Citizens Brigade, one of the US’s most successful improv groups, co-founded by Amy Poehler. For years, their time was taken up by working on the brilliant (and overlooked in the UK – it’s on Paramount+) Comedy Central show Broad City – with Aniello in the writers’ room (alongside Statsky), and Downs playing personal trainer Trey. By the time the show ended in 2019, the idea for Hacks had been incubating for four years. “We had a full university time span to think about the show,” he says.
Since its debut, it’s been one of the best things on TV. Right from the start it was absolutely packed with zingers (“What is this? Fifty tassels on one couch? Even Liberace would think it’s a bit much!” “He actually loved it. He did poppers on that couch in 85.” “Cool. I’m glad Liberace’s butthole was nice and loose in your house.”) And it wasn’t long until a classic odd-couple comedy, defined by a generational divide, soon blossomed into something remarkable. Jean Smart is brilliant as Joan Rivers-adjacent Boomer comedian Deborah Vance, while Hannah Einbinder’s portrayal of overly right-on millennial/gen Z comedy writer Ava Daniels – who finds herself unemployable after tweeting a poorly judged joke – has seen her emerge as a generational talent. Against the garish backdrop of Las Vegas and every damaged, beautifully drawn character who ends up in their toxic orbit, both women are forced into starting again, questioning everything about themselves. “I think the two of them are on a quest for dignity. At its heart, that’s what the show’s about,” declares Downs.
Over four seasons, the characters become closer, the relationships deeper, the arguments and the subsequent payoffs more rewarding. Such idiosyncratic scenarios have included a desert road trip, a bonding session via many weed edibles, improvised standup at an AA meeting and a lesbian cruise. “The story is this sort of dark mentorship between these two women in comedy, from different generations,” says Downs. “But the magic of the show is in their friction.”
It’s not all been smooth sailing, though. Season three divided viewers and critics after Ava ended up blackmailing Deborah and what was a comically toxic relationship between them became corrosive and spiteful, with some fans suggesting that the drama was winning out over the comedy. There were mind games, litigation and a shattering of trust between the two. But was making the show darker all part of the plan? “Definitely,” says Downs without hesitation. “There’s only so many times you can blow up the relationship and then reset it … Every season we try to flip it on its head.” That season still won three Emmys, by the way.
It also proved to be weirdly prophetic, with Deborah causing political controversy that ends up forcing her off air as a host of a late-night talkshow, after she refuses to cut a joke about a major actor associated with the same studio as her show. In the years since it aired, real-life late night has started to come apart at the seams, with CBS’s The Late Late Show disappearing altogether, Jimmy Kimmel temporarily suspended, and Stephen Colbert bowing out next month, ostensibly for financial reasons, but almost definitely for political ones. Could Downs see which way the wind was blowing?
“What’s weird is, because we had plotted out so much of it so long ago, we always knew that the white whale for this character would be this late-night show. It’s obviously a goal for a lot of comedians, or at least it was, so when we were first conceiving it … late night wasn’t in the state it’s in now. Certainly, when we wrote season four and had her pressured to cut something and then refuse to be censored, we had no idea it was going to happen. So, it was dumb luck.”
The final season is a victory lap for the show. It feels far lighter and sillier than the previous two seasons, which dealt with the notion of “Be careful what you wish for” after Deborah’s talkshow gig ended up tearing our two protagonists apart. This time round, Deborah and Ava’s relationship is on a different footing – there’s affection, mutual respect, and, dare I say it … love? “They’ve gone through so much, and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. They’re bonded in a way that they haven’t been before.”
In the final season, Deborah is very much being punished for choosing integrity and friendship over the bright lights and shiny floor of late night. She falls victim to a non-performance clause, seemingly inspired by the time Conan O’Brien was barred by NBC from appearing on television for nine months after he quit his late-night show, at which she brilliantly throws every workaround and publicity stunt in the book – from guerilla gigs to a cringeworthy appearance at a celebrity signing convention. But it all adds up to a more joyful feel for the final outing.
“There is so much pressure from the network and from advertisers [on late night],” says Downs, “and we really wanted to stretch that rubber band, so that when they came back together it would feel much richer. I think it’s made this season feel more delicious, because they get to be on the same page, have a shared goal, and know each other better than ever.” This season does feel delicious – sunnier, more playful, but with just enough heart and pathos to steer us towards a satisfying end. The renewed lightness allowed the writers to play a bit, too. “There’s a lot of bucket list episode ideas that we’ve always talked about,” says Downs.
These include anxiety dream sequences, a meditation on AI and an episode – my standout from this season – which is a Frasier-level farce: where Deborah forces Ava to lean into an initial lesbian-related misunderstanding in order to achieve a ridiculous objective. Without spoilers, Deborah’s “at any cost” attitude towards her comeback lends her relationship with Ava a new, gloriously uncomfortable, intimate dimension. “As a show about comedy, it felt like a perfect thing for us to do a classic farce – a door slamming, miscommunication farce,” laughs Downs, “and to do it in a way that was a bit of wish-fulfilment for fans.”
So often Hollywood’s favourite subject is itself, but Hacks has managed to transcend the navel-gazing and be about something more inherently human. “Anybody can relate to ‘I have suffered an indignity, and I want people to hear my side of the story, and understand why they maybe got it wrong’,” says Downs. “It’s a love story, too – relationships can look like anything and aren’t always easy, and that, I hope, is relatable to people.”
But at the end of the day, and at the end of the show, it is, as Downs declares, a comedy show about comedy, and in its closing chapter, Hacks manages to achieve what all great standup should. It may wander, it may take you down a dark alley, it may have you doubting your own moral compass, but ultimately, it sticks the landing. But don’t be sad to see Deborah take her final bow – as she would tell you: “Crying gives you wrinkles.”
Season five of Hacks is on Sky and NOW from Friday 17 April in the UK. It is currently available on HBO Max in the US and on Stan in Australia from Friday 10 April.