I mean, it does, but still.” When he drifts into contact with a potential business investor-played by the terrific Scott Bakula, who, with “Men of a Certain Age” and “Behind the Candelabra,” has been making a specialty of these sorts of elderly-cocksman roles-it feels like the building of a generational bridge.
“Thinking that sex will make me feel better. “I’m such a cliché,” he moans to his female roommate, an ex from before he came out. Between pickups and Zumba classes, he’s waiting tables. A middle-aged stud, Dom wrecked his financial health years earlier, supporting a meth-addicted ex. The show is equally strong when it focusses on other characters, including Agustín, an artist who makes no art, and the slightly older Dom, played by the impressively mustached Murray Bartlett. The spine of the first four episodes centers on this layered cross-cultural flirtation, and while I don’t want to spoil much more than I have-though relationship-driven shows don’t rely on surprise, they do benefit from it-it’s an attraction that swerves, a few times, in surprising directions.
As Paddy tries to kick his life into gear, he stumbles into various humiliating traps: an OkCupid date peppers him with questions, then rejects him as a low-calibre prospect at a work party, he hits on a man who turns out to be his new boss (Russell Tovey) and he gets truly terrible advice from Agustín, an upper-class Cuban-American, on how white-boy Paddy should prepare for a date with a “cholo.” The result is one of the most gruesome hookups in recent history, and that’s saying something, considering what’s on cable. Alvarez-is moving in with his own boyfriend, Frank (O. He’s stinging from two bits of news: his ex-boyfriend has got engaged, and his best friend and roommate, Agustín-the excellent Frankie J. A Colorado transplant, Paddy works as a video-game designer. But “Looking” is a stealth breakthrough, if only because it treats its highly specific circle of gay men with warmth and playfulness, viewing their struggles as ordinary, not outrageous.Īt the show’s center is a youngish man in flux: twenty-nine-year-old Patrick (the pretty-faced Jonathan Groff).
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Some critics will surely find the show insufficiently transgressive, or “slight,” that code word which is often applied to stories about love and dating. With its unglamorous sex scenes, the show will inevitably be compared to “Girls,” but “Looking” has far more in common with Nicole Holofcener’s sweet-and-sour ensembles, or the eighties film “Parting Glances”-unhurried portraits of sprawling social worlds.
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(Remember when the big TV season started in September? Not anymore.) In contrast to “Weekend,” which was set in a grimy, depressing city in the Midlands, “Looking” takes place in that Emerald City modern San Francisco, where same-sex marriage is legal and older definitions of gay identity-rebel, outsider, artist-have begun to curl with age.
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Their collaboration is a real beauty, the standout among several smart series launching in January. Now Haigh is directing a TV show called “Looking,” for HBO, written by Michael Lannan, and based on Lannan’s short film “Lorimer,” from 2011. It was a moment that felt at once discreet and defiantly political. But, because they’re both men, a stranger wolf-whistles and yells out a slur, and the more guarded of the two finds himself nearly lunging toward the voice. In many ways, the film is a classical indie romance, with two opposites talking themselves into love. They collide like pool balls, in bars and beds and kitchens, for days. In the British director Andrew Haigh’s first movie, “Weekend,” from 2011, two strangers have a one-night stand that promises to last forever.
“Looking” treats its highly specific circle of gay men with warmth and playfulness.