Overlooked HAP AND LEONARD is one of the best shows of the year

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The premiere season of SUNDANCETV’s adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale’s HAP AND LEONARD garnered several year end accolades.

CHICAGO’D named it one of the top ten best new shows.

Sundance TV absolutely nailed it with their adaptation of Joe R Lansdale’s book “Savage Season”. Michael Kenneth Williams and James Purefoy are incredible actors in their own right, and their on-screen chemistry made Hap and Leonard one of the more enjoyable shows of 2016. Add in Christina Hendricks (Mad Men) and Jimmi Simpson (Psych), and there were few rookie shows we were more excited to be picked up for a second season. 

Michael K. Williams and James Purefoyas the titular characters in SundanceTV’s HAP AND LEONARD

Kenny Herzog at PASTE included the series on his list of The 10 Most Unfairly Overlooked TV Shows of 2016.

While we’re at it, three cheers for Sundance’s other stealthy 2016 offering, HAP AND LEONARD, adapted from Joe R. Lansdale’s novels and set to air Season Two starting March 1. As a self-contained sextet of episodes, its first season stands on its own as wild, weird and massively entertaining. It may not feel that way when we’re introduced to the show’s title characters—Hap (James Purefoy), a conscientious Vietnam objector and day laborer, and Leonard (Michael K. Williams), a gay Vietnam vet prone to rage—or even during their early misadventures salvaging some storied loot from the bottom of a swamp. But once they and their misfit co-conspirators (led by Hap’s ex, played by Christina Hendricks) cross paths with joyriding lunatics Soldier (Westworlds Jimmi Simpson, in a career-best bit of mania) and Angel (the fearsome Pollyanna McIntosh), Hap and Leonard escalates, rapidly reaching surreal heights of Mad Maxworthy mayhem, all set among the swamps of late ‘80s Texas. And with plenty of Eurodancing.

Image Credit: SundanceTV

For TV GUIDE, Kaitlin Thomas mentioned the series had one of The Best Opening Credits of 2016.

HAP AND LEONARD is based on a series of books by Joe R. Lansdale and the TV adaptation’s colorful opening credits are the right amount of twang and pulp to fit the genre.