Since “Hap and Leonard” establishes the intensity of their brotherhood, it can take the audience into uncomfortable places and make broader topics of prejudice and injustice personal. In the season premiere he beats a criminal senseless for urinating on his prized rosebush, topping off the incident by repaying the offense in kind.) Mind you, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine fit the popular concept of what it means to be masculine. Grounding “Hap and Leonard” in a devoted, affectionate male friendship goes counter to the standard vision of machismo or manly identity seen elsewhere on TV. They’re two good guys aching to do right by the people they encounter over the course of this new six-episode season, but who end up running afoul of the local law no matter what they do. That said, Hap and Leonard aren’t cops - Hap is an ex-con who went to jail for refusing to go to Vietnam, Leonard is a proud veteran of that war.

One’s a hothead, the other a by-the-book Boy Scout, and so on and so forth. “Hap and Leonard,” returning for its second season Wednesday at 10 p.m., draws somewhat on the tradition set in place by “Starsky & Hutch,” Crockett and Tubbs of “Miami Vice” and Ponch and Jon of “CHiPs” fame, ensuring we know at least some of the dynamics that makes them work. To view the men purely through the lens of that description, though, makes them seem like a gimmicky take on the long line of buddy action duos. The lifelong best friends express how they feel to one another without compunction or a hint of awkwardness that Hap is straight and Leonard is gay is just part of who they are. Hap Collins (James Purefoy) and Leonard Pine (Michael Kenneth Williams) aren’t even an unconventional duo. Look behind the curtain of its murder mystery, which careens through turns that are at once predictable and obscenely unfair, and see Sundance’s “Hap and Leonard” for what it is - a wonderful platonic love story. Strip away the so-called “ swamp noir,” a label describing the East Texas twang born of a meeting between arid and sultry.

Hap and leonard mucho mojo