Hung
HBO | Release Date: June 28, 2009
CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
21
Mixed:
13
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
New York Daily NewsDavid Hinckley
Season 1 Review: HBO bills Hung as a comedy, but it uses comedy the way it uses sex--to set up darker, more interesting and complex points. It's amazing how many of those are out there. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalDorothy Rabinowitz
Season 1 Review: Thomas Jane and Tanya Skagle's performances aside, Hung remains, despite all efforts to inform it with larger meaning, trapped in being all about just what that title says. Read full review
60
Washington PostTom Shales
Season 1 Review: Since the show steadily improves as the first few episodes progress, Hung can hardly be written off as a failure. Read full review
60
TimeJames Poniewozik
Season 2 Review: I feel that there's a really good dark comedy about the decline of the American dream struggling to emerge from the often-forced plots. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyKen Tucker
Season 1 Review: Thomas Jane, though, is a revelation--he plays hopeless haplessness without coming off wimpy, and his initial uncomfortableness as a pro gigolo is charming. But Hung's awkward tone becomes frustrating. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMaureen Ryan
Season 1 Review: Hung, despite some droll humor and the occasional dry insight, is even more of a disappointment. Read full review
50
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteRob Owen
Season 1 Review: It's possible that Hung will lighten up as time goes on. The weak ending to Sunday's pilot is trite and feels like a half-hearted effort to be uplifting. It doesn't work. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunDavid Zurawik
Season 1 Review: That is profound stuff--if only the series did a better job of capturing it. The idea that all he has to sell is himself is an interesting one intellectually, but it doesn't play very well onscreen. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily Nussbaum
Season 1 Review: It’s not impossible that the show might become, as it seems intended to be, a sitcom take on Susan Faludi’s Stiffed, a perverse fable about the way a man emasculated by the economy learns to strut. But to do that, it would have to have a grander, more empathic vision of the world around Ray. Right now, it just doesn’t go deep enough. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineMichael Murray
Season 1 Review: Lacking the poetic and poignant touch that might help make the ridiculous sublime or the sublime ridiculous, HBO, under cover of a dangerous and racy premise, has created a middlebrow comedy that, like its main character, looks good but has little to say. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyKen Tucker
Season 2 Review: It turns out, not merely depressing, but unfunny in its comedic moments and unmoving in its dramatic ones. Which is weird, because Thomas Jane is charming as gigolo Ray and Jane Adams' Tanya is always interesting as his pimp. Read full review
50
VarietyBrian Lowry
Season 2 Review: Season two, unfortunately, takes that start and heads in the wrong direction. Read full review
50
PopMattersDaynah Burnett
Season 2 Review: While Hung has its stage set to see some of these types of stories play out, scene after scene positions Ray as a cipher for other characters. Read full review
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