High stakes connect HBO’s latest comedies The Brink and Ballers

Two new, star-studded HBO comedies, The Brink and Ballers, debuting on OSN, show that averting a nuclear war and surviving American football have more in common than you might think.

Jack Black, left, and Aasif Mandvi in The Brink. Courtesy OSN / HBO

Whether it’s a nuclear bomb or a football that you are handling, the worlds of geopolitics and professional sports have at least one thing in common – no one wants to be responsible for a fumble in a high-stakes game.

A pair of new half-hour comedies from HBO – which feature some big-name stars and debut on Monday night on OSN – take a darkly humorous look at these high-pressure worlds.

First up is The Brink, an epic comedy with top-drawer talent including Jack Black (High Fidelity, Tropic Thunder), Oscar-winner Tim Robbins (Mystic River, The Shawshank Redemption) and Pablo Schreiber (who earned an Emmy nomination for his role as prison guard George Mendez in Orange Is the New Black). They star as three desperate and disparate men trying to save the world from nuclear Armageddon.

“I was drawn to the material just because I hadn’t seen any­thing like it on television before,” says Black. “It was so new and different and original, and the fact that it dealt with, you know, Middle Eastern politics and was a comedy, was just very fresh and exciting – and I wanted to party with these guys.”

United States secretary of state Walter Larson (Robbins), lowly foreign service officer Alex Talbott (Black) and a prescription-­drug-dealing Navy fighter pilot Zeke “Z-Pak” Tilson (Schreiber) dive into a political pressure-­cooker when a rogue general seizes control of Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal, leaving the fate of the world resting on their shoulders.

From the turbulent streets of the Middle East to the White House situation room, and an aircraft carrier in the Red Sea, this strung-out trio tap-dance through chaos to weave the kind of madcap global comedy rarely seen since director Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove (1964), a Cold War-era political satire about an unhinged American general who launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.

When brothers Roberto and Kim Benabib, the co-executive producers and creators of The Brink, pitched their idea to legendary producer Jerry Weintraub (Nashville, Diner, The Karate Kid), he bought the pilot within 10 minutes of reading it.

“Pretty much everyone that read the script signed within 24 hours,” says Robbins. “It was like: ‘Oh my God, I could not believe that this landed on my desk.’ Jack [Black] was the same way. I called Jack and said: ‘Are you going to do this?’, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do this.’ It was like this incredible engine that just within two months was going to series.”

Black says: “I had a great time even when I was, like, being waterboarded.”

Indian-American actor and comedian Aasif Mandvi – a former correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – is also on board as Rafiq Massoud, a Pakistani employed by the US embassy. As a co-producer, he also writes for the series.

In depicting modern-day Pakistan and its people, producers say they took a respectful approach, using Urdu and Pashto advisers to help them get the culture and language right.

“We took great pains to make sure our portrayal of Pakistan was real and believable,” says Roberto. “We save our satire for war-hungry generals, but the Pakistani people that are portrayed – Rafiq and his family, the Pakistanis caught in the middle of it – I think, are portrayed very sympathetically.”

The second new show is Ballers, created by Stephen Levinson (a veteran of Entourage and Boardwalk Empire), which transports us, first-class, to the hedonists' paradise of sun-dappled Miami, where a posse of past and present American football players are experts on the field but pretty much clueless when it comes to life off of it.

Furious 7 star Dwayne Johnson leads the on-screen team as Spencer, a retired superstar struggling to make it as a financial manager to friends who are still playing. His over-the-top boss, Joe, played by Rob Corddry – also a former Daily Show correspondent, and star of the Hot Tub Time Machine movies – will do anything to seal a deal.

Johnson, who is also an executive producer, says his character finds it difficult to “monetise” his friendships, even if his success depends on it. As a former pro footballer and wrestler in real life, Johnson has faced the fear and doubt that come with starting over on the bottom rung in a new endeavour.

“For a lot of athletes, there’s always the goal: ‘What’s the next thing?’ ” says Johnson. “And in this case, the next thing is this second half of Spencer’s life, which he … wanted to do well and succeed in. He’s been down the road that these players have gone down before. He feels that he can bring a certain quality to their lives.”

Johnson's inner circle includes: talented but volatile receiver Ricky (John David Washington; also a former football pro); Charles (CSI: Miami star Omar Miller), an unhappily retired lineman who hates "civilian" life; rookie phenomenon Vernon (former NFL player Donovan Carter), who's in a financial mess, weighed down by hangers-on; and top-tier sports agent Jason (Troy Garity), who often throws Spencer a bone.

While critical reaction has been mixed, there's no denying Ballers pleases the fans. With nine million loyal viewers in the US, it is HBO's highest-rated comedy in more than five years.

“We make this for the consumer and I really feel a vote confidence from them,” says HBO programming president Michael Lombardo.

• The Brink (11pm) and Ballers (11.30pm) debut on Monday, August 24, on OSN First Comedy HD