HAP & LEONARD Season 2: MUCHO MOJO

Entertainment is often seen as an escape, a brief respite from the daily doldrums of our collective boring lives. While this is a valid (and often true) point, there exists a plethora of literature, music, film and art grounded in harsh realities and inconvenient truths. Plenty of us can envision battling zombies and orcs, but just as many can connect to a character grinding it out in the rat race, day in day out, maybe catching a lucky break once every blue moon. The universe is a gargantuan, uncaring swirl of chaos; step back and laugh at it, or get sucked into the void.

Joe R. Lansdale is a writer that understands this, more so than many. While plenty of his fiction is fantastical, almost all of it is grounded in some way by real life's absurdities and foibles. Horror fans may know him as the author of Bubba Ho-Tep, which was masterfully adapted into the film of the same name by Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, John Dies At The End) and stars Bruce Campbell (if you don't know who this is, leave and never come back) as an elderly Elvis battling a soul-sucking mummy. The bulk of his output, however, has involved the trials and tribulations of Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, two best friends from East Texas that have been tangled up in some of the most ludicrous, hilarious and terrifying situations anyone could come up with.

Director Jim Mickle and writer/actor Nick Damici, who previously turned Lansdale's Cold In July into one of the best suspense thrillers of the last decade, have returned to adapt Hap & Leonard for the Sundance channel. The first season, Savage Season, followed the plot of the first novel; the showrunners smartly kept the season to just six episodes, mimicking the brevity and immediacy of Lansdale's writing. Season 2, Mucho Mojo, follows the same formula but doubles down on the emotional heft with strong themes of loss, innocence and racial tension.

A quick primer: Hap Collins is a white ex-con pacifist (sent to prison for dodging the Vietnam draft) who happens to be a talented boxer; Leonard Pine is a gay black Vietnam vet with serious anger issues. They are brought together early in life after a mutual tragedy, which Mucho Mojo deftly portrays in several scenes over the first few episodes, and remain best friends. The series takes place in late Eighties East Texas, where racism is still openly and defiantly practiced. While it could have been very easy for the show to exploit this in Hap and Leonard's relationship, especially in the current hyperbolic political climate, they kept the original spirit of Lansdale's novels: these two men, as ostensibly different as they seem, are brothers. They fight, they look out for each other, they bust balls. While Savage Season brought the characters to life, Mucho Mojo made them real.

Season two picks up right where Savage Season left its cliffhanger: the skeleton of a small child is discovered by Leonard under the floorboards of his recently deceased uncle's house, and he is quickly accused of the crime. (A recap of the season's twists and turns would do the show a disservice; also, as previously mentioned, there are only six episodes. You can find a spare six hours to watch one of the best shows on TV.) Mucho Mojo also benefits greatly from an extremely talented supporting cast: Tiffany Mack as Hap and Leonard's take-no-shit attorney Florida Grange; Cranston Johnson as the 'maybe corrupt, maybe not' Detective Hanson; Brian Dennehy as the imposing, omnipresent Sheriff Otis; and in the role most deserving of a guest Emmy, Irma P. Hall as the genteel neighborhood surrogate mother/grandmother/caretaker, Meemaw.

This woman will make you cry at some point.

Of course, we still have our heroes: James Purefoy (Hap) and Michael K. Williams (Leonard) are about as perfect a casting job as there can be. They embody the characters effortlessly, to the point where it will be almost impossible to read future Hap & Leonard stories without picturing Purefoy and Williams getting mixed up in something dark and shady. Chemistry is everything in a show like this, and they have it. Mucho Mojo ends with another cliffhanger that foreshadows the third Hap & Leonard novel Two Bear Mambo, so we can only hope Sundance picks up Season 3. It may not be Game Of Thrones or The Walking Dead, but its fans are just as passionate and it's just about as good (or in the case of TWD, far better). Does this count as an entertaining escape? Without a doubt. But you just might recognize someone along the way. It's closer than you think.

Season 1 of Hap & Leonard is currently streaming on Netflix; Season 2 can be found on Sundance.tv.