Those watching the Season 4 finale of The Walking Dead last night likely caught the new trailer for AMC's upcoming scripted drama Halt & Catch Fire, which is among the latest period dramas to air on the network, joining Mad Men and newcomer Turn in that regard. Set in the 1980s, Halt & Catch Fire stars Lee Pace and is a dramatization of the personal computing boom.
Created by Chris Cantwell and Chris Rogers, Halt & Catch Fire is a fictional drama that's said to capture the rise of the PC era in the early 1980s and will center on an unlikely trio -- a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy -- as they take serious personal and professional risks during the race to build a world-changing computer. The cast includes Lee Pace, Scoot McNairy, Mackenzie Davis, Kerry Bishe and Toby Huss.
The trailer takes a fun but intense approach, setting the time period nicely with the 1983 Eurythmics tune "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" and showing the lead characters apparently putting their futures on the line in their efforts to succeed in computer advancements during a crucial time in the science's history. It's an AMC trailer, so we would've been surprised if it spelled out the plot for us in some detail but in terms of setting the mood, teasing the cast and sparking an appetite for what could be a really great series, it gets the job done. And AMC was kind enough to pass along the following synopsis for Halt & Catch Fire, which premieres Sunday, June 1 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT:
From AMC Studios, “Halt and Catch Fire” captures the rise of the PC era in the early 1980s, during which a renegade trio — a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy — risk it all to realize their vision of building a computer that could change the future. The series charts the changing culture of Texas’ Silicon Prairie while tensions build within the group as they attempt to navigate the thin line between visionary and fraud and genius and delusion, and as their drive to do something that matters runs up against their ability to truly innovate. The 10-episode series is created by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers and executive produced by showrunner Jonathan Lisco (“Southland”), Gran Via Productions’ Mark Johnson (“Breaking Bad,” “Rectify,” Diner, Rain Man) and Melissa Bernstein (“Breaking Bad,” “Rectify”).“Halt and Catch Fire” is set roughly one year after IBM all but corners the market with the release of its first major product — the IBM PC. It is also the same year people realize that the IBM PC has a fatal flaw, which quickly makes personal computing anyone’s game. In this fictional drama, a former IBM executive, Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), plans to reverse-engineer the flagship product of his former employer, and he forces his current company, Cardiff Electric, into the personal computer race. MacMillan enlists the help of Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy), a once-great engineer who dreams of creating a revolutionary product while trying to manage his initially unsupportive wife, Donna (Kerry Bishé), and Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis), a volatile prodigy who puts her future in jeopardy to join MacMillan’s rogue PC project. “Halt and Catch Fire” thrives on the spirit of innovation and explores what it’s like to stand at the forefront of something truly great and world-changing and work toward it, no matter the risk.
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