HBO Picks Up Four New Comedies

Still searching for its next big hit, HBO recently announced pickups of four new comedy series, all looking to fill the voids soon to be left by Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm (both getting on in years) and Flight of the Conchords (set to end after the forthcoming second season). Here's a look at what you can expect to see on HBO in the next year or so:

• My favorite of the bunch, Hung stars Thomas Jane (pictured) as a high-school basketball coach with an extremely generous, er, endowment, who decides to turn his dull life around by making use of his particular large asset. Exactly how he does that is unclear, but expect some twisted suburban-middle-America antics from The Riches creator Dmitry Lipkin and filmmaker Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election), who directed the first episode.
• The only show thus far with a premiere date, East Bound & Down starts February 15 and stars underground comedy something Danny McBride (The Foot Fist Way) as a failed professional baseball player who returns to his hometown to teach P.E. at his old middle school, and is surrounded by the same people he abandoned when he left to pursue athletic stardom. McBride and his Foot Fist Way collaborators Jody Hill and Ben Best created the show, which is executive produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay.

• Bored to Death stars Jason Schwartzman as a hard-drinking Brooklyn writer who decides to become a private investigator after a nasty break-up with his girlfriend. Ted Danson and Zach Galifianakis co-star, which adds up to a pretty solid cast. The show was created by hard-drinking Brooklyn novelist Jonathan Ames.
• How to Make It in America, from the producers of Entourage, basically sounds like Entourage NYC: It follows a group of twentysomething dudes trying to "achieve the American dream" in New York City, whatever that means.

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