'Sunny Nights' Is a Darkly Fun Caper

Hulu’s new dark dramedy, Sunny Nights, has one hell of a packed pilot episode. After his wife leaves him, Martin Marvin (Will Forte) links up with his ne’er-do-well sister, Vicky (D’Arcy Cardin), to co-found a spray-tan business in Sydney, Australia. He’s busy trying to balance his new business with his quest to win his wife back when the local mob comes by to stir up trouble.

There’s a shape to Sunny Nights that might feel a little familiar to viewers of series like Killing It. Desperation, both personal and professional, collides; every episode is a constant hustle to stay above water, and somehow, colorful, terrifying organized crime is always getting involved. There are strains of Cohen brothers films in the DNA, where the dark laughs are had when lopsided capers blow up in the faces of the fools. That’s just what Sunny Nights has to offer. Every episode is a mad scramble as Martin and Vicky try to get Tansform off the ground. Viewers can be assured that whatever scheme they try will go horribly wrong. They blunder through beauty conventions, sneak into expensive hotels to pitch their product, fall into blackmail schemes, commit some light manslaughter; the usual!

The heat on the Marvin siblings turns up when they get tangled in the machinations of a local crime syndicate that operates out of a dingy beachside amusement park. Led by the brother/sister duo Kash (Miritana Hughes) and Mony (Rachel House), the mob runs all sorts of rackets from loans that will take fingernails with their repayment to extortion scams that fleece rich doofuses. They employ a retired rugby star named Terry Torres (Willie Mason) to collect payments. There’s also Susi (Jessica De Gouw), the mob’s resident honey-pot, who endures Kash’s threats and dodges the literal axes he throws.

It’s all good, dark fun, and the cast is uniformly excellent. Forte is in his element, Cardin could power an entire city with her energy, and I’m always happy to see House and her incredible feline face. There’s an exciting inventiveness at play with exploding crocodiles and an entire sequence shot from inside someone’s mouth. The dialogue is snappy and tight, with lots of great insults and sharp asides. Some scenes are overtly comedic, others are entirely dramatic, and very rarely do these two tones overlap. With the episodes running an average of 50 minutes each, Sunny Nights doesn’t always have the best handle on its tone all the time. That said, the series was dropped in its entirety on Hulu, and despite the episode length, it’s quite bingeable. Sunny Nights is uneven at times, but the cast and the writing make it shine.