In recent years, a certain branch of American political rhetoric has come to revolve around the veneration and intention-guessing of the Founding Fathers—a quasi-mythical group of historical figures who rebelled against a cruel king and his army of musket-bearing lobstermen, battling against them for the crime of stepping on the colonist’s pet snake without first granting them proper representation. The threat dispatched and the oppressor’s hateful beverages banished to the abyss known as “Bos-Tan har’Bhor,” The Fathers then proceeded to found a land of perfect freedom for everyone, with the minor exception of their wives, the poor, and their many, many slaves.
Hoping to tap into these heady, patriotic images and the Facebook-and-capslock-savvy people who love them, USA has announced that it’s picked up a pilot order for Poor Richard’s Almanack, a political drama set in a future where the collapse of America forces a handful of heroes to take on the mantle of the Founding Fathers for themselves. (Presumably, by finding the old Fathers’ transformation gems and powdered wigs, and enacting the ritual dance.) The series, which comes from Orange Is The New Black producer Jim Danger Gray and Game Of Thrones director Miguel Sapochnik, will jump between the present day and the future, where sensible, small-government thinking is working to keep the lights on, and the hordes of cannibalistic mutant gang members at bay.