HBO orders David Simon’s The Plot Against America mini-series

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Surprise, surprise, David Simon is sticking with HBO, and his next project with the premium cable network will be an adaptation of Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America." David Simon will co-write the script for the six-episode mini-series alongside his frequent collaborator Ed Burns (The Wire), with the pair serving as executive producers as well.

The alternate-history novel imagines a world in which Franklin D. Roosevelt lost the 1940 presidential election to Charles Lindbergh, the heroic aviator and rabid isolationist. Lindbergh then negotiates a "cordial understanding" with Adolf Hitler while his new government unleashes a program of folksy anti-Semitism. "For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America–and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother." I've been a big fan of all of David Simon's HBO shows, so I'm excited to see how he tackles the timely alternate history of The Plot Against America.

Before David Simon turns his full attention to the mini-series, he'll be returning to The Deuce for what will be its third and final season. The Deuce follows the story of the "legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s, exploring the rough-and-tumble world at the pioneering moments of what would become the billion-dollar American sex industry." In a statement on Twitter, David Simon said, "We're always conjuring the last scene before we write the first. So much the better when we work for people who allow us to consistently plan, arc and execute as intended. Thanks, @HBO, for the third and final season renewal and the chance for #thedeuce to tell its full story." Each season of the series has jumped forward in time, with the first kicking off in 1971, the second moving forward to 1977, and HBO has said that the third season will land in the early 1980s as it explores "the rough-and-tumble world that existed there until the rise of HIV, the violence of the cocaine epidemic and the renewed real estate market all ended the bawdy turbulence."