HBO Max’s new half-hour series, Made for Love, is a peculiar creature. Too absurd to be a drama, too spineless to work as satire, the program shuffles along in comedy’s boots but possesses none of that genre’s timing, wit, or irreverent insight. Like most HBO productions, it is well cast and sumptuously filmed. What it lacks, through its entire eight-episode run, is a single legitimately funny moment.

The series commences in the middle of the California desert, where 30-something protagonist Hazel Green (Cristin Milioti) is crawling out of an underground tunnel into the fresh air and sunshine. Behind her, glimmering and remote, is the global headquarters of Gogol, a decidedly unveiled stand-in for a certain ubiquitous tech giant. In fleeing this “hub,” her home and de facto prison for the last 10 years, Hazel is likewise escaping her husband, Byron (Billy Magnussen), the firm’s preposterously idiosyncratic founder. Her complaint? Byron has invented a neurological implant that will turn the couple into “a network of two,” with “every thought, every feeling, shared.” Privacy watchdogs of the world, meet your next assignment.