Deadline reports that HBO is developing a series based on Jim Sheridan’s In America, his 2002 movie about the universal experience of all Irish immigrants: living in a cramped tenement building with junkies, where you deal daily with the specters of poverty and death. Also, your only friend has AIDS. But ’twas all in good fun, and now HBO hopes to enjoy it on a weekly basis with a drama series based on that acclaimed film—which Oscar nominations for its screenplay, as well as for Samantha Morton and Djimon Hounsou—with Sheridan and his daughters Naomi and Kirsten returning to executive produce.
Should the project go forward, this story of an Irish family loving, laughing, and trying not to be crushed at every turn by early-1980s Hell’s Kitchen would be Sheridan’s first TV project—all the better for the filmmaker behind My Left Foot, In The Name Of The Father, etc. to fully explore the bitterness and agony that make the Irish the best people to go drinking with. Possibly HBO could pair it with The Leftovers, for a Sunday night of trying to pretend like things aren’t terrible, or with Girls, for an evening devoted to exploring two generations of what people consider “New York problems.” You will pair it with whiskey.