Hacks should, by rights, be one of the biggest and best-loved shows on TV. It beat The Bear for outstanding comedy series at last year’s Emmys, and is a triumph of dazzling wit and some of the most lethal backstabbing ever committed to the small screen. In the UK, at least, it hasn’t made the largest impact: probably because, until recently, new seasons hadn’t streamed here since 2022. It recently found a home on Sky (thank goodness), just in time for this fourth outing, which comes complete with a load of starry cameos that HBO have demanded that journalists keep stumm about. If you thought that the toxic frenemy vibe between The White Lotus’s blond BFFs was lacking, say, 500% more shrieking; multiple HR complaints; comedy-flavoured barbs; and a drug-fuelled night out in Vegas, this is the show for you.
Once again, we find ourselves in the company of veteran, vinegar-tongued comic Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), the erstwhile protege she loves to hate. At the end of season three, their rollercoaster relationship made another hellish loop, with Ava blackmailing Deborah into appointing her as the head writer on her new late-night chatshow. As this season begins, the animosity between the pair is clear to anyone within a mile. “She just called you the C-word,” permanently exasperated manager Jimmy (Paul W Downs) tells Ava. “And not in a cool, RuPaul way – in an angry boomer way!” Deborah plays dirty, even sending an anonymous tip to the network that Ava is using drugs at work. But Ava knows that the best way to square-up to her boss is by putting that writerly brain to work and – at least in the first part of the series – Einbinder gets all the cattiest lines (among them: “Aren’t you and Mary Magdalene neck and neck for the title of world’s oldest whore?!”) Unfortunately for the pair, their unlikely collaboration is exactly the angle that the show’s PRs are trying to push, with the New York Times on board to publish a major feature on Ava’s crucial role in Deborah’s renaissance.
Ava tries to commit to the bit as Deborah’s equal but, well, it doesn’t suit her, with Deborah’s psychic Diana (Polly Draper) informing her that she has a “rancid” energy radiating off her these days. Plumbing new depths of instability and misery, Einbinder continues to make Ava more than the sum of her socially anxious, millennial parts, fusing almost every line with a mixture of self-doubt and rage. Meanwhile, Smart offers another masterclass in how to break an audience’s heart – not least when her character has a health emergency – while making you wish that Ava had never unleashed Deborah 2.0 on the world.
Much of the series is concerned with making the new late-night show a hit, with Deborah and Ava committing various microaggressions towards a terrified group of writers. It could come off as a little “inside baseball”, but – being Hacks – we eschew the knottier details of how network television works. The main thing is that their new venture needs to be a success. Or, as Helen Hunt’s straight-shooting exec Winnie tells them, “if you thought that getting this job was hard, that was easy compared to what you’re up against”. Thank God they have Shaboozey and Nancy Pelosi guesting on the show – although in a tragedy of Easter egg-sprinkling, we don’t actually see the country rapper and the former US Housespeaker get the Deborah treatment. As for Deb, she seems to have a wobble before her first appearance, something she vehemently denies (“I’ve never had stage fright – even when I performed in front of Saddam Hussein!”).
It’s a pleasure to see the return of series stalwarts such as Downs (who is also a co-showrunner with Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky), Mark Indelicato (Damien), Carl Clemons-Hopkins (Marcus) and my personal favourite, Megan Stalter as the idiotic but increasingly influential Kayla. There are a surfeit of excellent new additions this time around, too. It’s tough to pick out names in a cast this talented, but special praise must go to Julianne Nicholson as “Dance Mom”, a troubled viral star who feels like the kind of person Ellen DeGeneres would have made famous for 15 seconds in the 2010s. She has a lot of followers but – as Ava points out – so did Charles Manson. There should always be more screen time for Kaitlin Olson as DJ, but we’ll take what we’re given.
In case I haven’t mentioned it enough already, season four of Hacks is very funny. But what makes it really special is just how raw it is, too, ready to hit you in the feels when you least expect it (there’s one hug, in particular, that left me questioning everything). Even when these two hate each other’s guts – which is most of the time – this truly is one of TV’s best love stories.
• Hacks season four is on Sky Max and is available on NOW. It is streaming on Stan in Australia.
