'Survivor's Remorse' a rags-to-NBA riches story

Fans of HBO's rags-to-riches comedy Entourage, about a young actor from Queens, N.Y., who makes it big in Hollywood, will recognize the premise of Starz's new offering, Survivor's Remorse.

The sitcom, premiering at 9 p.m. Saturday, is about a basketball prodigy from a Boston housing project who lands a multimillion-dollar contract to play pro ball for an unnamed team in Atlanta.

Created, written, and directed by actor-producer Mike O'Malley (Glee, Justified), Survivor's Remorse attacks its familiar material with a brazen, bold, take-no-prisoners attitude.

Jessie Usher (Level Up) stars as Cam Calloway, who forced his way into professional sports as an undrafted free agent, then had a record-setting season.

Echoing the opening episodes of Entourage, Survivor's Remorse has Cam signing his contract and moving to a gorgeous penthouse apartment in Atlanta. Yet, he goes nowhere without his very own escort - his tightly knit family, including his mom, Cassie (Tichina Arnold), a fiercely proud single mother who isn't shy about telling people she took the belt to her boy when he misbehaved; his openly gay sister, M-Chuck (Erica Ash), whose delicate features are belied by her truck-driver, four-letter-word-rich vocabulary, and Cam's best friend and manager, his cousin Reggie (RonReaco Lee).

The central relationship is between Cam, the talented star with unpolished social graces, and Reggie, an aspirational figure with a brilliant command of finance and public relations, who has closely cleaved to a multiyear plan for success that he drew up as a teen.

The pilot finds Reggie and Cam visiting old friends back in their Boston neighborhood. It's not a social call: They're there to pay $10,000 in extortion money to buy back a cache of compromising notebooks and homemade videos.

The emotional key is grief.

Both parties exude shame and desperation. The extortionists need the money, of course, but also some kind of recognition for the years of friendship they offered Cam.

Cam and Reggie are equally tormented, wracked with guilt for having survived.

Survivor's Remorse is one of a few contemporary sitcoms to take race and class seriously.

The writing has moments of embarrassing earnestness better left for a college-dorm bull session. For the most part, though, it is fearless and never shies away from showing its characters in a less-than-flattering light.

Cassie, for one, is excoriated in the second episode for speaking up on the red carpet about the salutary effects of spanking children.

She's umoved by the media backlash and refuses to issue an apology. "You all are trying to mainstream me," she tells Reggie.

Cut. And then she's at a news conference, (crocodile) tears streaming down her face, apologizing for the cruelty she inflicted on her son.

She walks off the dais, turns to her nephew, and says coolly, "That's going to cost you $100,000 - of your own money, not Cam's."

Survivor's Remorse

9 p.m. Saturday on Starz.

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