Realizing it has its hands on a show that has something for everyone—James Franco fan, New York history buff, and porno lover alike—HBO has ordered David Simon’s The Deuce to series. The show, which takes its name from 42nd Street in Times Square, will chart the slow rise and fall of squalor in 1970s New York, as entrepreneurs looked to find new venues for the world’s oldest, non-rock-farming related professions, before being shut down by the rise of HIV and the looming threat of Rudy Guiliani’s jackbooted Friendliness Enforcers.
Franco—answering the silent psychic call of the internet-picture-posting multitudes—will play a pair of mob-connected twins, while a recently signed-on Maggie Gyllenhaal will star as veteran prostitute, looking to upwardly promote herself into the city’s suddenly, uncomfortably rising porn scene. The series is being co-written by Simon, with his frequent collaborator, George Pelecanos.
The Deuce is just the longest in Simon’s 16-year partnership with HBO, which reaches all the way from 2000’s The Corner and The Wire, to the recent miniseries Show Me A Hero, which starred certified internet space boyfriend Oscar Isaac as a rising politician in ’80s New York. (David Simon really likes the histories of modern American cities.) He’s also reportedly working on an as-yet-untitled political series for the network, alongside Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein.