Better name…Hank?
Bob Odenkirk, well-known because the scamming lawyer Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul, returns to TV in Lucky Hank as grumpy Hank Devereaux, a middle-aged English division chair and professor at a low-rent Pennsylvania faculty. In the comedy-drama, the husband and father spirals right into a midlife disaster fueled by his entitled Generation Z college students, his brainy however peculiar colleagues, and his doubts about his profession. (The faculty bookstore doesn’t even carry his one novel.)
The venture is predicated on the 1997 novel Straight Man, by Pulitzer Prize–profitable writer Richard Russo. Odenkirk — who says as a school child he aspired to be a Jack Kerouac-style novelist — warmed to it partly as a result of it introduced him again to his comedy roots: “Saul was funny at times, but he wasn’t part of the joke. Hank’s a wisecracker. He laughs at his situation while he suffers.”
(Credit: AMC)
The actor additionally preferred “the positive side to it. Saul was a tough guy to play. He was so alone. He wanted Kim [Rhea Seehorn] to love him, but they were never going to fully embrace each other.” Hank advantages from a powerful relationship together with his spouse, effervescent highschool vice principal Lily, performed by The Killing’s Mireille Enos. “As crabby as Hank is,” Odenkirk notes, “he loves his wife, and she loves him.”
When Hank berates a pupil (who demanded a critique!), the fallout threatens his tenure and causes cracks in his residence life. Odenkirk isn’t any stranger to midlife shocks, after having a coronary heart assault on the set of Saul. “My growth, or whatever may come, from that heart attack, I’m still in the middle of it,” he says. “I’m working on work-life balance. I want to make the right choices so [I do] the best I can with the time I have left for the things I love.”
For Hank, these issues are Lily and his college-age daughter Julie (Olivia Scott Welch). Notes Odenkirk: “Hank may think he’s unlucky, but the more you watch it, the more you think, wow, you got lucky, man.”
Lucky Hank, Series Premiere, Sunday, March 19, AMC, IFC, BBC America, SundanceTV