HBO has always managed to produce a very wide variety of series, ranging from the vampiric True Blood to the crime drama The Wire to the epic saga Game of Thrones. The network is now moving forward with an entirely new show all about the porn industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The Deuce has been promising ever since the pilot was ordered and the cast filled with proven stars such as James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal. HBO has officially ordered The Deuce to a full series.
HBO has reason to show faith in The Deuce as a series. According to a report from Deadline, The Wire creator David Simon and his longtime collaborator George Pelecanos are the minds behind the premise and wrote the pilot. Considering the critical, as well as popular, success of The Wire, Simon and Pelacanos are a solid team to lead a new show.
The Wire alums aren’t the only folks behind the scenes who are all but guaranteed to make The Deuce worth watching. Michelle MacLaren of Breaking Bad will be tackling directing duties. Simon, Pelecanos, and MacLaren will be credited as executive producers as well as other past Wire collaborator Nina K. Noble.
The Deuce will follow the story of the legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The show is set to explore the rise of HIV, the violence of the cocaine epidemic, and the renewed real estate market in the area that heralded the end of pornography production in Times Square. The Deuce may be about porn, but there’s much more to it than just sex.
The Deuce will have a formidable crew in front of the camera as well as behind. James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal are the biggest names attached to the project and will undoubtedly bring their best acting chops to HBO for the new series. Simon has brought in former Wire actor Lawrence Gilliard Jr. for a key role. Garry Car, Margarita Levieva, Dominique Fishback, and Emily Meade will also appear.
There’s no word yet of how many episodes have been ordered, so we can’t say for sure if The Deuce is being designed as a one-off, self-contained series or to continue over the course of many seasons. HBO has found success in the past with both formats, so it should be interesting to see if movie stars such as Franco and Gyllenhaal would have made commitments to a potentially long-running television show.
Of course, HBO is about as close to film as television can possibly get. With high production values, seasons generally running for fewer than fifteen episodes, and pretty much all of the nudity and language that anybody could possibly want, the sky is the limit on HBO. Franco and Gyllenhaal aren’t the only big names usually associated with film to spend some time on HBO in recent years.
Unfortunately, we don’t know just yet when The Deuce will hit the airwaves. Luckily, there’s plenty of solid TV to watch in the meantime. Check out our schedule of midseason premiere dates to see when the best of the best will air in 2016.
