At last combining entertainment’s dueling trends of reimagining classic literature and making cars go really, really fast, Fox has purchased Pomona Kings, described as a “Romeo And Juliet drag-racing drama” in a sentence that should be buried inside a time capsule, as so perfectly does it capture our modern era. In what was never a story of more “whoa, that car is going really fast,” Pomona Kings concerns two rival families—one white, one Latino, both alike in dignity and decals—battling it out in Southern California’s “world of custom car shops and drag racing,” and star-crossed lovers who are surrounded by gang warfare, car theft rings, and, presumably, lots of cool accessories. (“What light through yonder window breaks? Oh right, it’s Juliet’s sweet neon license plate frame.”)
The show hails from Eureka co-creator Jaime Paglia and former Fox exec Marcus Wiley, who likely looked at Sons Of Anarchy and, as so many scholars have before them, loudly asserted that you can’t do Shakespearean tragedy justice with only two wheels. Ponoma Kings is thus expected to be the most faithful adaptation of The Bard, at least until someone finally sets Othello in the world of long-haul trucking.