Watch the award-winning, wickedly funny Hacks on Sky Max

Brilliant news for comedy fans: the superlative US series Hacks, winner of seven Emmy Awards including last year’s trophy for Best Comedy Series, is coming your way in its entirety. That includes the complete third season, which is new to UK TV! The date to mark in your diary is Friday 7 February, when the complete box set will be in On Demand > Sky Max and the first episode of season 3 is on Sky Max HD (CH 110) at 9pm. 

It’s a comedy about two women in comedy. Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) is a legendary stand-up playing night after night in Las Vegas, but her material is getting a little stale. Young writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder), who’s in hot water after an ill-advised social media post, is paired with her by their agent to see if they can help resurrect each other’s careers. 

To say they hit it off straight away would be… well, an outright lie. Deborah resents the implications of Ava’s arrival, and Ava is put off by Deborah’s intransigence and high-handed manner. But the two recognise the reality of their situation and, if you guessed they’d find a way to work together and even start to build a grudging mutual respect, you wouldn’t be far wrong. However, the relationship between these mercurial women remains fragile, and it could crumble any moment.

Hacks is created and written by Lucia Aniello, Paul W Downs and Jen Statsky – key contributors to the terrific 2010s comedy Broad City – and as well as being extremely funny in ways both extravagant and subtle, it’s a brilliant study of an inter-generational relationship and an eye-opening insight into how comedy works. Here’s why we’re big fans and why, whether you’re a fan already or it’s new to you, the new season should be on your must-watch list.

Deborah Vance has devoted her life to making people laugh, partly because she loves it and needs it, but partly because it’s brought her the lifestyle she feels she deserves. Laughs not as lucrative as they used to be? Go on a TV shopping channel and sell some branded products! She’s shrewd, witty, outspoken, prickly and capricious, and Jean Smart embodies all these characteristics superbly, always hinting at vulnerability beneath Deborah’s outward strength. And it’s all punctuated with a wicked cackle. 

The awards voters agree, giving her two Golden Globes and three Emmys as Best Lead Actress in a Comedy. Smart, who first found TV success in the sitcom Designing Women, has recently been known for dramatic roles in the likes of Fargo and Mare Of Easttown, but she’s returned to her comedy roots in style with Hacks.

If Deborah is flawed, then Hannah Einbinder’s Ava is chaotic: headstrong, entitled, simultaneously overconfident and unnecessarily self-doubting. She sabotages her relationship with her well-meaning mother (Jane Adams, Sneaky Pete) every time she opens her mouth. But it’s clear she knows comedy, and what Deborah needs – and she sticks to her guns in the face of her boss’s resistance.

And just when you are starting to admire Deborah for her on-stage skill or business acumen, her wildly erratic daughter DJ (It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’s Kaitlin Olson) appears to remind you that while Deborah may have maintained a long and successful career, it came at a cost.   

Employer/employee, mentor/mentee, friends/frenemies, surrogate mother/daughter… There are elements of all these in the interactions between Deborah and Ava, which adds up to the kind of satisfying relationship that makes a TV show compelling. While some comedies might have everyone make up and hug before the end of the episode, that’s not Hacks. It can get pretty awkward as the two push each other in various provocative ways.

Arguably Hacks’ most sympathetic character is agent Jimmy, played by writer Paul W Downs: it’s his genius idea to match Deborah with Ava, but all he gets is grief from Deborah and pressure from his boss, all while being constantly irritated and undermined by his nepo-baby assistant Kayla (Megan Stalter). We’ve all suffered the horrors of incompetent and annoying colleagues, and Downs exudes an everyman haplessness.

The best comedians make it look effortless. Hacks is out to prove that it’s never easy and can sometimes be painful. It’s endlessly interesting to see how the, er, comedy sausage is made – from Deborah and Ava’s wrangling over the direction the stand-up material should take, to Deborah’s household and other revenue streams that keep her in comfort, all overseen by long-suffering business manager Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), who has his own ambitions.

It’s a fast-growing city, a mecca for tourists and the US’s absolute centre for pop culture consumption, from music residencies to UFC and WWE events as well as comedy, but Las Vegas isn’t represented very often on screen (outside casinos). Hacks gives us access to some of the glittering venues where people flock to enjoy themselves, but also takes us into the back corridors, untidy hotel rooms and suburban residences that make up the city.

Season 3 of Hacks starts with a double bill at 9pm on Friday 7 February on Sky Max HD (CH 111). All three seasons of Hacks will be available in On Demand > Sky Max on the same day. And there’s a fourth season coming.