Before I get rolling into the news part of this piece, if you call yourself a David Simon fan and have yet to watch his absolutely excellent miniseries from last year, “Show Me A Hero,” starring Oscar Isaac (yep, Poe Dameron himself), just go do it and thank me later. For everyone else, Simon hasn’t stopped for a moment and won’t be able to take a break anytime soon, as HBO has just ordered his new show to series.
Starring James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, “The Deuce” finds Simon trading the drug world of “The Wire” and “The Corner” for sex, with the show chronicling the rise and legalization of pornography, from the free ‘n’ easy days of the early 1970s, to the AIDS stricken era of the mid-1980s. But that’s not all: Franco will be pulling double duty, playing the dual roles of twin brothers Vincent Martino and Frankie Martino, who were fronts for mob control of the porn industry. Meanwhile, Gyllenhaal has the role of Candy, a hooker pulled into porn.
As you’d expect, the talent on this one is strong with Richard Price (“The Wire,” “Clockers”) among the writers, and Michelle MacLaren (“Breaking Bad”) directing the pilot. I would assume we won’t be seeing this until 2017, though maybe if “Westworld” can’t get it’s act together, it might arrive sooner.
Meanwhile, Simon has another show in the works at HBO, set on Capitol Hill, with none other than Carl Bernstein of the Watergate scandal involved. Damn. If this is the future of #peakTV, it can keep rising as far as I’m concerned. [Variety/Deadline]
