While I have been looking forward the final season premiere of Damages tonight, it’s the show that follows it that has started to get me excited.
The premise of Hit & Miss — heck, even its title — sounds like a dumb sitcom from the ’80s. A professional assassin (Chloe Sevigny) learns she has a child in need of a guardian … only she’s not the kid’s mom … she’s his dad. Sevigny plays a male-to-female trans character (and British at that) who begins a relationship with a family she didn’t even know she had.
Hit & Miss isn’t a comedy, but it’s not even a dramedy a la Showtime’s Shameless (which I can’t stand). it’s an outright drama with Sevigny as a kickass hitman (hitwoman? hitperson?) with a deeply buried soft side.
The tone is overcast and moody, not unlike how you’d imagine an English version of Dexter might be, with shocking violence and nudity (that’s how we first learn she’s trans). But it’s also dazzlingly relevant and smart in how it deals with one of the first serious leading portrayals of a trans character I’ve seen on TV. It’s much more hit than miss.
Premieres tonight at 9 p.m. on DirecTV’s Audience Network.
