![]() The debate over whether to desegregate the city is explored calmly, without moralising, and, while the programme clearly backs desegregation, the fears of the middle-class white people into whose neighbourhoods new poor, black residents will be moved are examined in detail. In one episode we are treated to the sort of amusing DIY montage you might find in a Hollywood romcom (again set to Springsteen, whose music is sprinkled liberally and enjoyably through the six episodes).īut there is much that will be familiar to Simon fans, too. Under the guiding hand of Paul Haggis, the once-feted director of Crash and former Scientologist, the opening episodes in particular have a most un-Simon-like zip and accessibility an early scene even includes a helicopter ride from downtown Manhattan to Yonkers that roams happily over all the key tourist sights, including the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building, while a Bruce Springsteen track chimes away in the background. Whether Simon is aware of, or agrees with, such criticism, his new six-part miniseries Show Me a Hero, which begins on HBO on 16 August (and a day later on Sky Atlantic in the UK and Showcase in Australia) and tells the true story of a 1980s Yonkers mayor caught up in a battle to desegregate public housing, takes a very different tack. Its characters were at best forgettable and at worst intensely irritating. Treme’s premise – it told the story of New Orleans residents attempting to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Katrina – seemed to play right to Simon’s strengths, yet the end product was wilfully undramatic and sometimes unwatchably didactic. But after splitting from Burns – a former teacher and policeman who probably deserves more credit for The Wire’s brilliance than he usually gets – Simon’s next major project, this time with writing partner Eric Overmyer, was a major disappointment. ![]() Creator David Simon and co-writer Ed Burns followed it up immediately with the pithy Iraq war drama Generation Kill, with which it shared a non-judgmental tone and gripping characters that the viewer somehow came to care deeply about despite their manifest flaws.
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