WICKED PAIR: Watch Ray and Tanya at work

WHEN the going gets tough, how far would you go in order to survive?

Would you give up your principles so that you can feed your family? How about your dignity? Even your body?

HBO, home of multi-Emmy Award winning series
Sex and the City and Entourage, is now bringing you Hung, a story about a nice guy pushed by desperation into living a double life, next month.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane of The Punisher) is quite desperate. He was a popular baseball player, married to his cheer-leading high school sweetheart Jessica (Anne Heche) and had twins to boot.

But after an aborted professional career with the Atlanta Braves, Ray becomes a teacher and coach for the school’s varsity basketball team. He thought things couldn’t get any worse... and since this is a TV series, it does.

The school's basketball team is on a losing streak — he is underpaid and uninsured. Worse still, his wife of 20 years leaves him for her dermatologist. Then a fire damages his home, so his twin children who had been living with him, move in with their mum and her smug new husband. Lonely and at his wits' end, Ray attends a self-help class where the mantra is to identify a personal 'winning tool' to market for financial success.

That's where he meets struggling poet Tanya Skagle (Jane Adams) who, after spending a night together, inadvertently helps him realise what his 'winning tool' is, and sets out to exploit his well-hung 'greatest asset' in hopes of changing his fortunes.

Tanya, who works the night shift at a Detroit law firm as a perma-temp proofreader, offers to help Ray in his new venture as a gigolo for a percentage, while also pursuing her own project, Lyric Bread — selling poetry in pastry. "Well, there's an element we’ve all experienced where you like someone and you'll do anything to be around them," said Adams, when asked why Tanya helps to 'pimp' Ray. "I think she's at a point where she's ready to do something different.

Also — she's the kind who talks to flowers. Not twisted crazy. I just think she has a very particular view of the world. She's very sensitive and writes songs and the whole thing," she continued. "For someone like Tanya to walk into that 'how to be a millionaire' class (where Tanya met Ray) — she's really been pushed into it. She's trying to be more practical but what I find funny is that she's trying to bring her whole skewed vision to the practical world."

With roles in Frasier as plastic surgeon Dr Mel Karnofsky; Happiness as Joy Jordan, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind under her belt, one wonders if she had any problems playing, essentially, a pimp. "For Tanya, it's just this thing where she's taking a course to be a business woman and this guy is trying to sell himself on the Internet and she says, 'Whoa! There are lots of different ways to do that."

That's the humour in it — someone who never thought a week earlier that she'll be pimping some guy. But it turns out she's good at it.

"I love the bit where she doesn't want to let anyone know that he’s her only client — there's a scene where she gets a call and says 'I'll see who we have available… hmmm… the guy I'm thinking of for you…' It's like any start-up business — she has to make it seem more than it is. People, ironically, relate to that."

Indeed, everybody could use that kind of humour, once in a while. With episode titles like Great Sausage or Can I Call You D***?, anybody with a wicked sense of humour would definitely love the series.

With only 10 episodes for its first season, Hung has already received two nominations for the upcoming 67th annual Golden Globe Awards for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series — Comedy or Musical (Jane) and Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television (Adams).

This new off-beat comedy series premieres on Monday, Jan 4 at 10pm on HBO (Astro 411). For more play times, visit http://www.hboasia.com/