First Look: James Purefoy and Michael K. Williams are BFFs in ‘Hap and Leonard’

It stars The Wire and Boardwalk Empire alum Michael K. Williams as a hot-tempered, gay Vietnam vet who helps solve crimes with his ex-convict BFF (The Following’s James Purefoy) and the BFF’s ex-wife, played by Mad Men alum Christina Hendricks? How soon can we binge-watch it?

As this exclusive Yahoo TV first look at a photo from Sundance TV’s upcoming Hap and Leonard drama illustrates, that fine cast will unspool a “darkly comic swamp noir story” with a strong country vibe. Set in a small Texas town in the 1980s, the series is based on a series of novels and novellas by author Joe R. Lansdale, whose Hap Collins and Leonard Pine will also star in a series of graphic novels that will be released later this year.

More background on the pals: Purefoy’s Hap spent time in prison as a young man when he refused to be drafted and serve in Vietnam. He is very adverse to violence — unlike Williams’s Leonard — and in Lansdale’s novels, Hap and Leonard work for a cop-turned-private investigator named Marvin Hanson.

Leonard didn’t avoid the draft nor a lifetime of violence, which can be sparked if anyone dares to make a racist or anti-gay remark in his presence. As Hap often tries to talk him out of violence, Leonard is just as perplexed by Hap’s avoidance of it. But the two are more like brothers than friends, especially since Leonard’s uncle, who raised him, rejected him when he found out Leonard is gay.

Hendricks’s Trudy, Hap’s ex-wife, re-enters the men’s lives and offers them “a deal they can’t refuse.”

Season 1 is scheduled to premiere in early 2016 on Sundance TV, with six one-hour episodes.