U.S. Secretary of State Walter Larson has mixed feelings about his employment, and the 24-hour availability it requires.

Played by Tim Robbins in the new series The Brink, Secretary Larson whispers to his aide, “This job sucks ass. I should have asked for Secretary of the Interior. No one's going to take you away from a hooker in the middle of the night to save Mount Rushmore.”

The issue here certainly is less “stable” than rocky Mount Rushmore. A crisis in Pakistan sets up the narrative in The Brink, which debuts June 21 on HBO and HBO Canada.

The Brink is meant to be funny, and it is. But it's kind of a cross between Stanley Kubrick's 1964 Cold War-inspired dark political comedy Dr. Strangelove and the contemporary TV drama Homeland.

When a rogue general seizes control of Pakistan, the fate of that country's nuclear arsenal obviously is of grave concern to many nations. Secretary Larson actually is one of the voices of moderation inside the White House situation room.

On the ground in Pakistan is a low-level Foreign Service officer named Alex Talbot, played by Jack Black. Caught outside the embassy walls when all hell breaks loose in Islamabad – he was scoring some weed, of course – Alex finds himself in the unlikely position of playing a key role as Secretary Larson tries to avert disaster.

“He's a bit of a climber,” said Black, describing his Alex character. “He's kind of a wannabe CIA dude.

“He loves America, so he's there for good reasons, too. But he's a bit of a doofus. He's a bit of a stoner. But he's also got some ... I don't know, I can't speak to it very well, that's why I'm not a writer.”

Fortunately, the makers of The Brink were on hand to shed some light on the bigger picture.

“We went to see a Kubrick exhibit and we found ourselves in the Dr. Strangelove part of it,” recalled Roberto Benabib, who created The Brink with his brother Kim. “As much as we loved that film, we realized there wasn't a lot like it at the present moment in the world of comedy.

“Clearly, dramas are dealing with what's going on in the world, but comedies are more intimate and smaller and more about the lives we lead during our daily existence. We just felt, 'Here's something you're not seeing a lot of, and this is a real opportunity.' ”

The result is a story about some of the dangers that exist in the real world, told through characters who can be very funny within that world, if that makes any sense.

“We also took something else from Dr. Strangelove, which is that it had a plot that could have held its own and not had any jokes in it,” Benabib said.

“It was a wonderful story. It really was a thrilling ride. And it was based on a novel that was not comical at all. We kind of made a vow that our story would hold its own whether we were being funny or not, that it would be believable and grounded and real.”

That's an important distinction, because I got a bit of a wrong impression of The Brink from the trailers that are circulating. I feared the series might be wall-to-wall “pull your pants down” humour, and it's not completely absent. But The Brink actually is better than the trailers might indicate, particularly because not everything is a total joke.

“I still do satire,” Robbins observed accurately. “It approaches something with the idea that it is entertainment and it must be funny, but it's dealing with content and issues that are relevant to how we're living today.”

That's how The Brink winks. And Mount Rushmore is fine, if anyone asks.

Email Bill

Follow @billharris_tv