Hardly hopeful
Else clues• ___ Reaper
• Affording no hope
• Bad, as a prognosis
• Black
• Cheerless
• Dark, as prospects
• Depressing
• Dismal
• Dispiriting
• Dreadful
• Far from promising
• Filled with gloom
• Forbidding
• Frightful
• Ghastly
• Gloomy
• Hardly cheerful
• Hardly rosy
• Hardly upbeat
• Harsh
• Harsh; bleak
• In bad humor
• Like a feared reaper
• Like bad news
• Like film noir
• Like film-noir plots
• Like reality, at times
• Like the
• Like the Reaper
• Looking down
• Macabre
• Morbid
• Not at all cheerful
• Not at all rosy
• Not bright
• Not looking rosy
• Not optimistic
• Not sanguine
• Not too rosy, as an outlook
• Not very funny
• Pessimistic
• Pretty hopeless
• Reaper-like
• Severe; stern
• Sinister
• Somber
• Stern
• Stern-looking
• The ___ Reaper
• Tough
• Unhappy
• Unpleasant
• Unpromising
• Unsmiling
• Unyielding
• Very serious