SECOND CHANCES (HACKS, SEASON 3 & ZERO DAY)

HACKS, Season 3 (Sky & NowTV)

It's been a long wait - nine months to be precise since it aired in the US.

However Season 3 of the Emmy and Golden Globe winning comedy drama 'Hacks' has finally made it to the UK and Ireland.

This time it has new homes on Sky Go, Sky Max, NowTV and TG4 after failing to appear on Amazon Prime, the streaming service that housed it previously.

Has it been worth the wait? 

You betcha.

(SPOILER ALERT!!)

Season 2 ended with Jean Smart's legendary Las Vegas comic Deborah Vance riding the crest of a wave following the success of her comedy special.

However right at the death, she shockingly cut loose the writer who helped her comeback, Hannah Einbinder's Ava Daniels.

The third season finds Ava living in Los Angeles with her actress girlfriend, Lorenza Izzo's Ruby Rojas and writing for a hugely popular satirical TV show.

Back in Vegas, Rose Abdoo's estate manager Josefina is worried about Deborah and warns Carl Clemons-Hopkins' Marcus, the Chief Operating Officer of the comedian's company that their boss isn't in a good place.

That starts to correct itself when Deborah and Ava's paths inevitably cross at a television comedy festival in Montreal, they confront how their working relationship brutally ended, bond over coconut cake and reconcile.

When the prospect looms of a second shot in her career at hosting a late night talk show, Deborah sweet talks Ava into temporarily moving back to Las Vegas and reigniting their comedy partnership.

But do Ava and Deborah have a genuine friendship or is it a purely transactional working relationship ?

Writers Paul W Downs, Lucy Aniello, Jen Statsky, Andrew Law, Joe Mande, Guy Branum, Carol Leiter, Carolyn Lipka, Ariel Karlin, Pat Regan and Samantha Riley deliver sharp scripts that don't just go toe to toe with Season 3 of its Emmy Best Comedy rival 'The Bear' but actually deliver more laughs.

While 'The Bear' feels like a drama with occasional laughs, 'Hacks' definitely feels like a comedy with moments of occasional drama which is probably why it won the Emmy last year for Best Comedy.

But Season 3 also won it because when it comes to drama, it's every bit the equal of Season 3 of 'The Bear'.

With a role like Deborah Vance, Smart could easily dominate proceedings as the Joan Rivers style hardened comedian with a soft centre who has had to endure a lot of male chauvinism in her day and personal heartache.

She again earns every ounce of her Best Actress Emmy.

However Einbinder's Ava also continues to grow as a character who almost treats her boss like a surrogate mother, leaving her vulnerable to thundering disappointment.

Clemons-Hopkins, Downs as Deborah and Ava's manager Jimmy LuSaque, Megan Stalter as his way too enthusiastic assistant Kayla, Kaitlin Olson as Deborah's daughter DJ, Christopher McDonald as the casino boss Marty Ghilain and Abdoo also shine, delivering witty supporting performances.

But it is a measure of how respected 'Hacks' has become that established stars and character actors like Helen Hunt, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Hendricks, J Smith Cameron, Stephen Toblowsky and Patton Oswalt as wellas the hosts of ABC's 'The View' guest star.

All nine episodes are expertly crafted and like all the best shows, the very best installments stand on their own as tightly written stories that enrich the development of each character.

Among the highlights are episodes in which everyone holds their breath as DJ takes part in a roast of Deborah, another where the veteran comedian is fawned over by Toblowsky's Henry Weeks and invited into his circle of comedy legends, a golf tournament where Ava ends up caddying and encountering Hendricks' rather demanding competitor, one where Jimmy tries to persuade Christopher Lloyd's eccentric surviving relative of Fatty Arbuckle into giving him the movie rights to the controversial silent movie star's life story and another where Deborah and Ava take an ill judged trek in the woods. 

With a climax that deliciously sets up Season 4, here's hoping we don't have to wait as long on this side of the Atlantic as we had to wait for Season 3.

(Season 3 of 'Hacks' was made available for streaming on Sky Go and NowTV in the UK and Ireland on February 7, 2025 and was also broadcast on Sky Max in the UK and TG4 in Ireland)

ZERO DAY (Netflix)

There has been much excitement about movie legend Robert de Niro taking on his first longform TV drama role.

Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim and Michael Schmidt's 'Zero Day' plunges the double Oscar winner into a political conspiracy thriller about a cyber attack that causes chaos in the US.

De Niro plays former US President George Mullen who stood down after one term for family reasons but is asked as a highly respected former prosecutor by the current President, Angela Bassett's Evelyn Mitchell to head up a commission to investigate who was behind the Zero Day attack.

Mullen's wife, Joan Allen's former First Lady and judicial nominee Sheila Mullen isn't wholly convinced heading up the commission is a smart idea.

Their estranged daughter, Lizzy Caplan's Congresswoman Alexandra Mullen is downright hostile to him doing it.

Talked into taking the role, President Mullen assembles a team that includes his longtime personal aide, Jesse Plemons' political operative Roger Carlson, his former White House chief of staff Connie Britton's Valerie Whitesell and McKinley Belcher III's lead investigator Carl Otieno.

With Russia initially blamed for the cyberattack, Mullen and his team begin to suspect actors closer to home, forcing him to make unpopular decisions that stretch civil liberties.

With Dan Stevens' popular blowhard radical podcaster Evan Green on his case as well as Matthew Modine's House of Representatives Speaker Richard Dreyer and Bill Camp's CIA director Jeremy Lasch, is the former President playing with fire and will he get burned?

Newman, Oppenheim and Schmidt's six part miniseries is, as you'd expect, a slickly made affair that takes itself very, very seriously.

De Niro is very focused in the lead role and delivers a pretty solid dramatic performance.

However despite its budget and its bombast, 'Zero Day' is not that spectacular.

It suffers from sometimes being a bit too preachy, with plot developments that seem just too convenient or are barely credible.

For example, Caplan's daughter is appointed to scrutinise her father as a ranking member of the House Oversight Committee monitoring the Zero Day Commission.

She is also having an affair with Roger and along with her mother is annoyed that Valerie is back in her father's world for all too predictable reasons.

Against the real world backdrop of a Trump administration that is ripping up the usual Washington DC playbook, the show's writers seek to land punches on the malign influence of power hungry digital entrepreneurs and social media influencers and podcasters who exploit conspiracy theories.

However the writing is so uneven that some cast members flounder and some fare better.

So while de Niro, Britton, Belcher III, Modine and Camp mostly benefit, Bassett and Allen feel underused and Caplan, Plemons, Stevens and Gaby Hoffmann as a tech entrepreneur Monica Kidder feel like the fevered creations of a writing team addicted to MSNBC.

There is potential to extend the show if Netflix so wishes but major doubts remain whether it really merits a second term.

('Zero Day' was made available for streaming on Netflix on the UK and Ireland on February 20, 2025)