Fans of Mark and Jay Duplass’ quirky indie favorites Cyrus, The Puffy Chair and Jeff, Who Lives at Home understand just how well the brothers know their way around a family-centric, struggling-suburbanite tale. So it’s no surprise that the trailer for the pair’s first ever TV series, Togetherness (premiering Sunday, Jan. 11, at 9:30pm ET/PT on HBO), features two simple lines of text: “Some people have it all figured out. These are not those people.”
If your immediate reaction is “Amen, brother, er, brothers!” — and if it isn’t, who ARE you? — well, that’s the foundation on which this unflinching half-hour laugher is built. Few of us have life by the tail, so we may as well have a swell time commiserating.
In addition to writing and producing the series, Mark Duplass stars as 30-something Brett Pierson, whose marriage to plainspoken Michelle (Melanie Lynskey, Two and a Half Men) is in a serious, and oh so typical, suburban parenthood rut. And to make matters worse — or more interesting, anyway — two new additions to the Pierson household are on the way. Mark’s best pal Alex (Duplass favorite Steve Zissis) — his acting career stalled and his rent unpaid — moves in, along with Michelle’s sister Tina (Amanda Peet, The Good Wife), whose freewheeling single lifestyle is starting to get old as she, too, gets older.
For better or worse, family and friendship are redefined as the quartet learns to coexist while not giving up on their individual dreams.
Togetherness premieres Sunday, Jan. 11, at 9:30pm ET/PT on HBO.
