After a career of making films concerning unlucky-in-love Irish-Americans with fairly diminishing returns, Edward Burns looks to be on an upswing, now that he's turned to a life of crime.
TV crime, that is. Having just played Bugsy Siegel on another historical crime story for TNT—the upcoming, Frank Darabont-produced Mob City—the same network has recruited him to develop Public Morals, a series Burns will write, direct and star in. The show will take place in 1967, and follow the NYPD's Public Morals Division, the city's vice squad in an era that had no shortage on vice. Burns' character will try and raise his sons to follow the straight and narrow, while dealing with the seediest criminals the city has to offer.
Just to be clear, this is Edward Burns, who directed The Brothers McMullen, not Ed Burns, who co-created The Wire. It's an easy mistake to make—and there's an outside chance it's a mistake TNT actually did make, because who wouldn't want to see a show about a 1960s vice squad from the co-creator of The Wire? But alas, this is Edward Burns, not Ed. Even so, Steven Spielberg's Amblin TV is producing the series, so TNT has high hopes (even if it means we might see a New York in which all the cops carry walkie-talkies instead of guns).