Summary: a not very funny rumination on a very funny tv show

Who wants to read about what the tv series Hacks has to say about leadership? Probably no one. But it has lessons on that subject area as important as those that Buffy and Angel teach on philosophy and morality. So here are a few thoughts.

If you haven’t seen Hacks yet, you are lucky. There are four seasons awaiting your delectation. However, like much writing about humour the following is not all that. Still, this is free to read. So tough.

Hacks is about the borderline unhealthy relationship between a legendary comedian, Deborah Vance (played by the legendary Jean Smart) and her new writer, Ava Daniels (the very funny and genuinely admirable Hannah Einbinder). 

While the setting may be the glamourous world of showbusiness, fundamentally it is a workplace comedy. In the workplace that Deborah and Ava find themselves in by season 4 they represent archetypes of bad leadership: Deborah is imperious and ridiculously demanding, with no sense of workers’ rights and frequently forgetting that she has a duty to teach not just perform. Ava is well-meaning but so young she does not know what she does not know. In particular she has not quite grasped that her brilliance as a writer does not necessarily provide her with the knowledge and experience to be a professional leader. 

If you are in any way like me, this will immediately remind you of Lavina Greacen’s book, Chink, her biography of the Irish Second World War general Eric Dorman-Smith.

Just me?

Well, a central theme of that book was that leadership is a collective task, requiring at least two people to have any chance of working. 

This is something that the writers of Hacks also instinctively seem to understand. Neither Ava nor Deborah are necessarily people you would like to know in real life. But together they make each other better as people and as leaders. Of course, they have difficulty admitting this to each other – too much ego getting in the way. And they have even more difficulty realizing that there are others central to what success they have achieved, not least Jimmy, their self-effacing and under-appreciated manager (perhaps the real hero of the show?)

Maybe if they had read a few of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache novels they would know that they need to use more the four sentences that achieve wisdom: “I was wrong,” “I’m sorry,” “I don’t know,” and “I need help”. 

But they haven’t. Indeed, not enough people have. That is one of the reasons why there is so little wisdom and empathy among those responsible for leading in today’s world. It is also one of the reasons that moral leadership increasingly falls to the protests of artists like Hannah Einbinder and Kneecap, while so many more respectable pillars of society are silent as gravestones. 

All that aside, Hacks is one of the best portrayals of workplace politics since The Wire. And it’s bleeding funny.  Try it.