HBO debuted a goodly amount of teasers on Sunday, perhaps to ease the pain of Game of Thrones going dark until season four. Among the pack are The Newsroom, Boardwalk Empire, the undead Eastbound & Down, Larry David and Greg Mottola’s movie Clear History, and Stephen Merchant’s Hello Ladies.
The meatiest trailer in the bunch is the first real Newsroom season two promo. There’s an Occupy Wall Street name-drop and a lot of Olivia Munn. It’s much more intense than that desert romp teaser from last week, and much less symbolic and sandy.
In the new Clear History teaser, we get to see Jon Hamm as a Blackberry-belted executive, and a glimpse of a bearded, long-haired, totally unrecognizable Larry David … acting exactly like Larry David. It’s brief, but it’s more than we got last time.
Boardwalk Empire’s teaser is probably the best of all of these. It’s our first look at Jeffrey Wright as “Valentin Narcisse, doctor of divinity, philanthropist, student of culture and the man who runs Harlem.†That great Gatsbyish music helps the trailer from drowning in self-seriousness, too.
We only get a single snippet of Kenny Powers, and HBO doesn’t even have the courtesy not to bleep the F-word? C’mon, HBO. It’s YouTube. It’s fine. The “one true king†angle is a laugh, though.
Hello Ladies will star Ricky Gervais collaborator, Extras star, and The Office producer Stephen Merchant as a desperate Englishman trying to find love in L.A. This clip’s only twenty seconds, but it gives us a pretty precise idea of the awkwardness that’ll ensue. Merchant directed and co-wrote the pilot.