Capital New York

There’s a slight possibility that HBO is nervous about the rollout of "Luck," the premium cable network's latest bet on a powerhouse Sunday-night show, this time created by writer David Milch and produced by filmmaker Michael Mann.

The network gave the show something of a soft open in December, when it previewed the first episode following the "Boardwalk Empire" season finale. And then, after the show premiered its nine-episode, first-season run in earnest last night, HBO immediately made the second episode available to subscribers of its online, on-demand platform. It’s as though they’re trying to close the sale early. (Conventional wisdom solidifies so quickly in the age of the recap, after all.)

Though rightly revered for his genre-defining work on "Hill Street Blues," "NYPD Blue" and HBO’s own "Deadwood," David Milch hasn’t had a critical or commercial success in several years. His "John From Cincinnati"—a poetic riff about a surfing dynasty—was a one-season-and-done enterprise. A subsequent pilot about New York City cops (potentially a return to fertile subject matter) wasn’t picked up by HBO, either.

So now we have "Luck": A show with some storied talent behind the camera, as well as a cast that includes Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte, in addition to Jill Hennessy (starting in the pilot) and Joan Allen (eventually). On the surface, it’s about the world of the racetrack, where horses, trainers, jockeys, their agents (and, oh right, gamblers) are all jostling to handicap and then improve their fortunes. But like all of Milch’s best work, the principal character, the one haunting every scene, even though invisible, is the specter of information itself.

At the racetrack, finding a single piece of secret-though-can’t-miss knowledge is what motivates all the main characters on this show. Getting information is a lot of the action, as is keeping it from the wrong people until it has a chance to change the characters' destinies. And at the outset, the private nature of their collective search requires the audience to hang out and listen hard, largely in the dark, for the balance of the plot.

Here’s some of what happens: Star trainer Turo Escalante enters a long-shot horse in our track’s fourth race of the day. After hearing his jockey brag beforehand about how good the horse has been running—perhaps ruining the long-shot odds, if anyone hears the jockey—the trainer becomes furious. Then we have a scene in which a character with a thick Peruvian accent complains about a Cajun jockey to a stuttering agent. The sequence is thick with meaning and thicker with hard-to-parse sounds. It’s pure information overload, with an impressive amount of professional argot being spun.

A similar mood prevails while a syndicate of four down-at-the-mouth gamblers contrives its strategy for hitting the day’s Pick 6 jackpot of over two million dollars. “What’s happening?” the duller members of the crew keep asking during the races, a bit like the show’s audience. “Shut up,” comes the answer from the older sage in the group, the Detective Sipowicz-like Marcus, as if to say: Just stay with me.

The thing that keeps the viewer grounded through all these multiple narrative wind-ups is Mann’s filmmaking style. Though it's often nervy and handheld during scenes of conflict, it never loses its narrative clarity. Mann takes gorgeous lyric turns now and again, too, as when several of the groups who have been sketched in semi-confusing fashion in the course of the pilot all watch the same horse break from the pack to win the critical fourth race of the day. Mann uses composer Rhys Chatham’s "A Crimson Grail"—a symphony for 400 guitars, in which buzzing, idiosyncratically arranged notes occasionally cohere into massive unison chords—to bring the winning horse out from behind and into the lead. And, it seems, to underline the moment when narrative cohesion—or at least, enough for now—has been reached.

We also see the ugly, fatal reverse of triumph when a horse in another race breaks a leg mid-sprint, and has to be put down. That same sense of world-weary loss is evident in Nick Nolte’s elderly trainer-owner Walter Smith, who, as he brings a new horse to the brink of stardom, nurses pangs of regret about the fate of its father. (“Why didn't I hear it goin’ on,” Walter grumbles to himself, still upset that he was late to some critical information.)

Milch has seemed in the past to do some of his best writing in open spaces where his characters can observe one another, recoil in horror, or make the occasional pronouncement: The 15th squad-room in "NYPD Blue," or the thoroughfare outside the Gem Saloon in "Deadwood." You could even argue that "John From Cincinnati" stumbled in part because it lacked such a natural convening location. The California racetrack that gives the characters of "Luck" its common ground is a relief.

But one character is outside of that commons. Dustin Hoffman's character, Chester "Ace" Rothstein, can't go to the track in the first episode; he's just been released from prison in the opening seconds of the pilot, and he's got a few moves to make before he can return to the track (or to gambling). We learn, in a typically fractured fashion, that while Ace was away, his driver Gus “The Greek” Demitriou somehow pulled a lucky slot that earned him $5 million. (“Now I just do this for fun,” The Greek later wisecracks to a third party.) But he’s really Ace’s agent and friend—a partner who wants to help Ace take revenge on the shadowy powers at the track who saw him put away. Gus’ purchase of a $2 million horse, another horse currently resting in Turo Escalante's stable, is the preparation for Ace’s eventual return to the track.

But all that will come during future episodes. In the spirit of honest information dealing, you should know that critics who review and recap "Luck" are playing with information you don’t have. HBO sent out the full nine-episode set over a month ago, the better to hook us. Without spoiling anything, it’s possible to say that the show becomes less intimidating to process every week—and that, as the machinations of the characters become easier to parse, the emotional complexity of their stories becomes rewarding. (Also: Yes, meaty scenes for the women in the cast eventually do arrive, if not for quite so many as we saw in "Deadwood.")

The hallmarks for success—the stars, the craft, and HBO’s promotional budget—are all here, including Milch’s famously poetic ear for profanity. (Mellifluous lines like “fuck your picks, you degenerate prick” abound in this first episode). The only question now—the thing upon which the fates of Milch, Mann, Hoffman, Nolte and others is now dependent—is whether a sizable audience exists that is patient enough to watch their race all the way to the end.

Seth Colter Walls will be writing about "Luck" every Monday.

Seth Colter Walls

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