When , one of television’s greatest dramatists as creator of “The Wire,” brings a new miniseries to the screen, we know we’re in for heavier lifting than the ordinary TV drama.
Simon invites us to an intense course on public housing with “Show Me a Hero,” a study of race, class, politics and redemption, based on about Yonkers, N.Y.
“Show Me a Hero” premieres at 6 p.m. Sunday on HBO, airing in two-hour chunks over three consecutive Sundays. It is likely to be well-represented at next year’s Emmy nominations.
Although the story traces to the late 1980s, it’s a sadly timeless tale of the disastrous results of government operating on an assumption of white privilege. It’s based on a complex and not particularly sexy urban housing debate that ultimately destroyed an idealistic small-city mayor.
Simon offers a challenging six-hour miniseries that contains social and political echoes of “The Wire” but that feels amazingly topical, too, given recent events in Ferguson, Mo.; Baltimore; and Charleston, S.C. (The controversy surrounding makes the story particularly timely.)
Simon has had this miniseries in mind ever since “The Corner,” his stunning first project for HBO, about drug dealing in inner-city Baltimore. But, HBO notes, a few things got in his way — namely his creations “The Wire,” “Generation Kill” and “Treme.” Now he returns to his idea, along with co-writer and executive producer William Zorzi.
(“Ex Machina,” “Inside Llewyn Davis”) is engrossing as Nick Wasicsko, the young, optimistic city councilman in the late 1980s, living in the shadow of Mayor Angelo Martinelli (Jim Belushi).
When a lawsuit is brought against Yonkers by the U.S. Justice Department and the NAACP, the city is found guilty of using federal funds to promote segregation, building huge low-income housing projects on the wrong side of the tracks, that is, on the far side of the Saw Mill River Parkway. Martinelli realizes the political reality: It would be folly to appeal the decision. But Wasicsko leads a movement to appeal, drawing on the anger of citizens, which propels him to a victory over the incumbent mayor.
The hero is quickly eclipsed by reality: the appeal is rejected soon after the election and Wasicsko finds himself forced to obey the order from federal Judge Leonard Sand (Bob Balaban) to build 200 units of low-income housing on the white side of Yonkers.
The title taken from the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, “Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.”
Director Paul Haggis captures that tragedy, filmed in docudrama style on location in Yonkers, from multiple perspectives and with a dense, crowded feel.
The cast includes as Norma O’Neal, a woman in public housing, as Henry Spallone, a racist but charismatic politician, as Yonkers resident Mary Dorman who fights the proposed construction but evolves to join a group offering counseling to African-American residents moving to the east (i.e. white, middle-class) side of town.
Whether any lessons were learned through this all-American tragedy is difficult to say. Simon has noted the same fight is currently going on, with the same demagoguery, a couple of towns north of Yonkers.
By way of introduction to his teleplay, Simon wrote: “In our metropolitan areas where the demographics continue to change, the future is going to belong to individuals and groups and governments who are capable of operating in rooms where power is shared, where white privilege and assumptions of an enduring white majority no longer apply.”
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
