Dustin Hoffman's name came up, though he'd done no real TV work except for an uncredited episode of The Simpsons.  So he asked the show's creator and head writer, David Milch. "I said, 'Tell me what luck is,' " Hoffman recalls. "And he said, 'Waking up in the morning.' And I've never heard it said better."  In the new series, premiering Sunday (9 ET/PT) after a sneak preview last month, Hoffman plays Chester "Ace" Bernstein, a gambling operator newly released from prison. He uses his driver and confidant (Dennis Farina) as a front to buy a horse at Santa Anita, the storied 77-year-old thoroughbred track in Arcadia, Calif., and sets his sights on a buying a piece of the track.  Santa Anita is populated by a motley assortment of characters from all walks of life: a mysterious old man (Nick Nolte) with a horse of his own; an expert but secretive trainer (John Ortiz) and his veterinarian girlfriend (Jill Hennessy); a nervous agent (Richard Kind) representing an ambitious young jockey (Tom Payne); and a gang of four self-described degenerate gamblers, played by actors including Jason Gedrick and Kevin Dunn, the team's wheelchair-riding ringleader.  Nolte's Walter Smith "has a past, and when you have a past that is that strong, it (messes) you up, and the old man is a glacier of the glimmer of his past," says Nolte, 70. "But he's working toward the right path, trying to do it the right way, and that's the horse's way. It's the horse that decides to win, and the horse that decides to like you," not the other way around. "We corrupt that all the time because we don't know who we are; you get insecure."  Milch is fond of layered, sometimes similarly obtuse storytelling. With longtime partner Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law), he created NYPD Blue and other network crime dramas. Then Milch moved on to HBO, where his dark Western Deadwood was a three-season cult favorite, but 2007 surfer drama John From Cincinnati was a short-lived dud. (He recently signed a deal to adapt William Faulkner novels for the network.)  "I didn't know anything about David; I don't watch television," Hoffman says. But co-creator Michael Mann, who coined a different kind of cop-show style with Miami Vice, "I've known since the '70s; we worked together on a thing involving convicts (1978's Straight Time)," the actor says. "They started talking to me the first day, and Michael just says, 'I haven't seen you be the bow that delivers the arrow.' He says, 'You're reactive.' I never thought of anything like that."  Milch grew up at the track  Hoffman, 74, is known for roles from The Graduate to Rain Man, but he has rarely revisited those characters in sequels ("just because I haven't seen a good one"). Now he'll try his luck with an ongoing series that, in success, will tie him up for six years. "It's the closest to life I've ever had in terms of my work."  Mann elaborates: "Great actors are always in their best situation if they're on the frontier, doing something fresh and new, just like any other human being. It's a bit more challenging, it gets your blood running. What's wonderful about this character, and the idea of Dustin doing it, was that he is proactive, he's the man with the plan, the architect. He's the only guy who knows what's going to happen in advance. And we come to trust that Ace isn't telling us everything, but Ace has a plan that's full of the near future. (But) we're left a lot in the dark about a lot of it as it's unfolding."  Horse racing is new to TV drama, but for Milch, the equine theme is no accident. He has had a life-long devotion to racing, and he liberally sprinkles the script with phrases that might puzzle many viewers: "Pick-6," a single wager involving horses in each of six races, and "Bug Boy," an apprentice jockey.  "My dad took me out to the track when I was 5," and like him, the younger Milch had an "ambivalent relationship" with it. "He was compelled and fascinated by it, and at the same time, he regarded it as the antithesis of the way we were supposed to live. Milch has owned winners of several Breeders' Cup races, and he says even now that he has "been known to make the occasional wager."  Including on this series. He has been working on a script about a racetrack since the early 1970s. "These are characters at different levels of sophistication, all of whom are living (with) that conflict, and the fact that it's set at the racetrack is at once essential and almost irrelevant. I still have a feeling when I walk into a racetrack — and I've been around the game a long time — I say, 'Well, how are they going to beat me today?' "  Says Hoffman: "If you can go to Santa Anita at 6 in the morning, which the degenerates do, it's one of the most extraordinary experiences."  The horses were another matter. The "highly protected thoroughbreds" in the series' cinematic racing scenes — "not $4 million thoroughbreds, but $100,000, $150,000 thoroughbreds," says Mann, who directed the pilot — needed TLC. "They can run a quarter or a third of a mile, then they have to stop for 20 minutes and rest." After two more sprints, they "go home to a massage. So to do a race with eight horses, we needed 40."  Nolte's enigmatic, gravel-voiced character is meant to connect with most viewers' understanding of the racing world. "He has a kind of idealized relationship with the track, but there's also a naïvete in his attitude (of) what it means to own and campaign to run a racehorse," Milch says, which isolates him from the others.  And that shady past? "He was present on a breeding farm when something bad happened to a stallion," Milch says. "He had no role in it, but he feels as if he did."  Does Nolte know what comes next? "Would you want to know how you're going to die? I wanted my horse to win."  Milch, who is notorious for last-minute rewrites and an obsessive attention to detail, took a back seat in production, conceding there was some tension with Mann, another strong-willed auteur. "Once I turned the script in, this became Michael's show to realize, and he did an extraordinary job," he says. "It's not at all the way I'm used to working, and it was a considerable adjustment. But I'm a big boy, and I went into this with my eyes wide open."  The first season consists of nine hour-long episodes, fewer than usual. (The first aired as a low-rated Dec. 11 preview in a scheduling experiment that is unlikely to be repeated; it will air again Sunday with the second episode.)  HBO programming president Michael Lombardo says that while Luck may not be for everyone, it fits the channel's mold in dramas. Luck's "conversation between artistry and storytelling and big ideas makes this quintessentially an HBO show. Our greatest dramas have been shows that worked on a number of levels. There are people who watch The Sopranos and think of it as the best Mob show of all time, and there are people who watch The Sopranos and talk about the poetry in it, the essence of the family drama. And I think the same is true of Luck; it works on multiple levels."  Comparisons to that seminal series are hopeful. HBO has been successful with recent dramas True Blood, Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, but it faces intense competition. At this month's Golden Globe Awards, which it often dominates, Showtime shone brighter, with three awards: best drama for Homeland and acting awards for Claire Danes and Episodes' Matt LeBlanc.  "Fortunately, I'm not chasing audiences," Lombardo says. "What I'm chasing is enough of an audience to know that some people are being satisfied."  As for Milch, he's chasing those childhood memories. "There's a tremendous exhilaration and enthusiasm," he says, "that you feel for the mystery of the experience."
HBO tries its luck with a pedigreed new drama about horse racing, created by David Milch, produced by Michael Mann, and starring A-list talent.