King of the Hill's revival gets to grips with a much-changed America

Telegraph

2 days ago

The beauty of King of the Hill was that nothing ever changed. The world may have constantly evolved around Hank Hill, the bluff Texan patriarch at the centre of this animated family sitcom, but he clung stubbornly to his conservative, traditional ideals. From 1997 to 2010, Hank and his buddies drank beer in the alley, little Bobby remained 11 years old, and modernity was something that happened to those big city folk in the north-east. In Hank's heart, Ronald Reagan is still president.
Yet, as Disney and Hulu bring Mike Judge and Greg Daniels's show back for a long-delayed 14th season (it was previously on Fox), not even pigheaded Hank could deny things are very different now, both on-screen and off. Daniels, for instance, has become the hottest property in US television after he co-created Parks and Recreation and The US Office, while the show has been weighed down by tragedy – original cast members Jonathan Joss (Native American John Redcorn) and Johnny Hardwick (conspiracy theorist Dale Gribble) both died during production. Both characters feature in the current series, though there is no sign of Hank's niece Luanne, who was voiced by Brittany Murphy until her death aged 32 in 2009.
In the world of Arlen, Texas, things are rather different too. The timeline has jumped 10 years, with little Bobby (voiced by Pamela Adlon, also a bigger star thanks to Better Things) now a stubbly 21-year-old chef at a Japanese-German restaurant in Dallas, and Hank (Judge) and Peggy (Kathy Najimy) having spent the past decade in Saudi Arabia. When they return to the Lone Star State to enjoy retirement, Hank struggles to adapt to taxi apps, gender-neutral toilets and electric cars. It's rather a blunt way to remind us that Hank is a man out of time, especially when he blithely drops things like 'cancelled' and 'nepo baby' into the conversation.
After a lumpy start, the show – and the Hills – soon slots nicely into the groove, with the timeline bringing fresh perspective on familiar characters. Hank's sense of uselessness in retirement is handled beautifully, while watching Bobby carve out his own sense of what it is to be a man is an emotional experience for seasoned viewers (though Adlon's voice remains identical to how it was when Bobby was 11, which often proves unsettling). The current US president is never mentioned, but there's a piquancy in watching Hank, an essentially decent man but one who longs to live in the America of the 1950s, exist in a world that is now both aggressively for him and against him. Dale, who was a classic 1990s wingnut, now seems surreally mainstream – he is QAnon made flesh.
Crucially the show is still funny, with new showrunner Saladin K Patterson embracing Judge's willingness to press all sorts of buttons ('You can't play two race cards!' Bobby tells a black Japanese man, before mulling over whether Speedy Gonzalez was a racist stereotype or a Mexican revolutionary hero). Some of the episode themes are a little neat – toxic masculinity and the manosphere, cultural appropriation – but Hank Hill has become a fascinating figure through which to view modern America. The man out of time may just have found his perfect moment.