It starts next week. Clear your schedule.
Everyone will have their own opinion about the greatest ever TV show, but we’d wager that The Wire will feature very highly on most people’s lists.
Simply put, over the course of five seasons, David Simon’s sweeping epic about the Baltimore drug scene, seen through the eyes of drug dealers and law enforcement, redefined TV drama.
Indeed.
Since we last saw that epic montage which wrapped up the stories of McNulty, Bunk, Carver and company, Simon has been a busy man after creating the Emmy award-winning Generation Kill and Treme.
We’ve been itching for him to return to the world of crime and his new show, The Deuce, has already been earning some remarkable reviews.
The next great TV drama just landed: The Deuce is aces. @AoDespair
— Mark Frost (@mfrost11) September 11, 2017
One of many things I love about The Deuce: It starts chronologically exactly when Mad Men ends, 10 blocks southwest, and it's about selling.
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) September 17, 2017
The Deuce follows the rise of the porn culture in New York from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s.
Beginning in 1971, the show follows a cast of barkeeps, prostitutes, pimps, police and nightlife denizens as they swirl through a world of sex, crime, high times and violence and the porn business begins its climb from Mafia-backed massage parlours and film labs to legitimacy and cultural permanence.
The drama chronicles that moment in time when sex went from being a back-alley, brown-paper-bag commodity to a billion-dollar universal in American life, a moment when ground zero for the earliest pioneers in the flesh trade was the midtown heart of the nation’s largest city, New York’s Times Square.
The drama series stars James Franco, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Carr, Margarita Levieva, Lawrence Gilliard, Jr., Dominique Fishback, Emily Meade, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Chris Bauer, Chris Coy, Natalie Paul and Michael Rispoli.
With a rating of 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and 86% on Metacritic, it’s clear that The Deuce has already become a critical darling.
Here’s what they’ve had to say.
The Atlantic – “The rightful heir to The Wire.”
USA Today – “The Deuce is the kind of smart, well-written and character-driven series that won’t be overwhelmed by its sex-heavy concept, nor too reliant on it to sustain interest.”
EW -“The Deuce is an absorbing, resonant chronicle about the evolution of dehumanizing skin trades and the mainstreaming of adult entertainment.”
CNN – “In The Deuce, producer David Simon tries to do for the sex trade and 1970s evolution of pornography what “The Wire” did for drugs.”
The Deuce airs on September 26 at 10pm on Sky Atlantic. Don’t miss it.
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