Two New Shows on HBO: Divorce and Insecure

HBO may be focusing on scifi with Westworld, but human-sized drama that we can relate to is still important, and that is what you get with tonight's premiere of Divorce and Insecure.  

Divorce has an all-star cast and a link to the popular Catastrophe, but that may not be enough to save it from itself.  Here is what HBO is sharing:

Sarah Jessica Parker returns to HBO in the new comedy series, Divorce. Parker stars as Frances, a woman who suddenly begins to reassess her life and her marriage, and finds that making a clean break and a fresh start is harder than she thought.

Other series regulars include Thomas Haden Church, Molly Shannon, Talia Balsam and Tracy Letts. The series, currently in production in New York, was created by Sharon Horgan. It is executive produced by Horgan, Paul Simms, Sarah Jessica Parker, Alison Benson and Aaron Kaplan.

I have no idea why HBO is not playing up Sharon Horgan given her success with Catastrophe.  Are they trying to lessen expectations?  

Entertainment Weekly, rating the show C+, was not impressed, noting:

The show lightly interrogates the old chestnut that infidelity is a symptom of other problems, but it has no imagination for the marriage itself, and no deep insights into divorce, either.  The actors are on different pages...the result is tonal quagmire.  

This is disappointing given how well Horgan made us care about the new relationship between the characters in Catastrophe.  Maybe we needed marriage before divorce to make us care about the people in this new series.

So if Divorce does not work for you, you still have Insecure.   HBO has little to say about this show as well: 

The half-hour comedy series Insecure, starring Issa Rae, Yvonne Orji, Jay Ellis and Lisa Joyce, looks at the friendship, experiences and tribulations of two black women.

Salon does a better job describing the show, stating:

“Insecure” invites us into the lives of Rae’s character Issa and her best friend Molly (Yvonne Orji), two women who spend much of each day existing in inescapable irony. Issa works at a stupidly named nonprofit called We Got Y’all, dedicated to helping inner-city minority children. As the organization’s youth liaison, she is the one who interacts with the kids. She’s also the only black person on its staff.

Molly, a corporate attorney, embodies the frustrations of the modern professional black woman. She’s an expert in code-switching — the ability to appear one way to the white world and another among black folks — which makes her an asset in the workplace. As Issa puts it, Molly is like the Will Smith of corporate: “White people loooove Molly. Black people also loooove Molly.

Salon goes on to compare the female duo to the classic duo of Lucy and Ethel.  You cannot get a greater compliment than that.  

The show was created by comedian Larry Wilmore, who also had a hand in Black-ish.  He talks about the series and more in this Daily Beast interview.  Here is his first impression of Issa Rae:

I was very impressed. She had set up the project at HBO and they were looking to pair her with somebody and we had the same management. They told me about her and I didn’t know about her. Then I watched Awkward Black Girl and was smitten immediately. There was just something about her. She was just so funny and understated and yet so alive at the same time. I just thought, whoa, this person seems really interesting. And then when I met her, you just fall in love in a different way. She’s such an interesting, smart person. We really hit it off, chemistry-wise.

I will try out both new shows, but I am placing my bet on Insecure.