Nobody working in scripted television examines the American condition as honestly or bracingly as journalist-turned-producer David Simon.
Best known for creating the landmark series The Wire, which went well beyond the descriptor "crime drama" to become a searing indictment of institutional inequities in the modern American city, Simon's anger at injustice in all its forms, bred during his years as a Baltimore newspaperman, is boldly evident in everything he does.
"If you write politically and you're living in this moment and you're not angry, there's something wrong with you," Simon tells TimeOut. "This is the time to get angry. There's not going to be a tomorrow if enough people don't get angry."
Prestige TV trailblazer and journalist-turned-producer David Simon. Photo / Getty Images.
Simon's anger about the current moment greatly informs his new limited series, The Plot Against America, a six-episode adaptation of the 2004 Philip Roth novel which turned out to be an eerily prescient commentary on the state of American politics.
It takes place in an alternate World War II-era America where famed (real-life) aviator Charles Lindbergh secures the Republican nomination on an isolationist platform and wins the Presidency in 1940.
His victory keeps America out of the war and spurs a wave of anti-Semitic sentiment, which assists in the slow creep of fascism into American life.
The modern parallels of a story about how a celebrity politician spewing inciteful rhetoric gives rise to a nationalist movement are not lost on Simon, and indeed spurred the adaptation's production.
John Turturro, Winona Ryder, Zoe Kazan and Morgan Spector attend the premiere of HBO's The Plot Against America. Photo / AP.
"The book has a core truth about something that governance in American society is very vulnerable to, and has been since the beginning of the republic. [It's] completely analogous to this current political moment. The political winds are such that a lot of ugly stuff that you might have thought had been vanquished in the last part of the last century, or at least that we were headed down a better path, has come back."
We witness the events of The Plot Against America through the eyes of a middle-class Jewish-American family living in New Jersey. The Levins are comprised of insurance salesman Herman (Morgan Spector), his wife, Bess (Zoe Kazan), and their two young sons.
We also follow Bess' older sister Evelyn (Winona Ryder), who gets swept up into the nationalist movement through her romantic involvement with a rabbi (John Turturro), who aligns himself with Lindbergh and helps smooth over the President's anti-Semitism.
Zoe Kazan attends the premiere of HBO's The Plot Against America in New York. Photo / AP.
Kazan, who also co-starred in previous Simon series The Deuce, says she believes in the power of politically-motivated art.
"If David Simon had wanted to just make a political statement, he could have written an essay. I think that the reason to make art that has political themes is that it allows people to empathically enter skin or shoes that are not theirs and sort of look in a more nuanced way or a more emotional way at a situation."
"To see an actor talk politically is not as effective [as seeing] someone tell a story and use what they feel about something," says Turturro. "Storytelling is very powerful. I mean, that's what religion is for a lot of people: it's a bunch of stories. This is based on a great novelist, who writes intricate characters. It's not a polemic from one point of view."
Morgan Spector attends the premiere of HBO's The Plot Against America in New York. Photo / AP.
Spector, whose character watches in horror as the country he believes in changes, says working on the show increased his anxiety about what's happening now in America.
"My practice in the current climate is to try to not ride the daily wave of bizarre theatricality," he says. "And doing this project, you're actively working to make the circumstances of the story real, and because they parallel quite neatly some of our contemporary circumstances, I began to be much more terrified about what's going on."
"It's obvious to people who watch it that this is not The Man in the High Castle," adds Kazan, referring to the sci-fi series based on the Philip K. Dick novel about a world where America lost World War II.
"This is not about what happens when Nazis conquer America, it's about the slow creep of nationalism within our institutions and how that can happen and sit continuously without our acknowledgement or consent."
John Turturro attends the premiere of HBO's The Plot Against America in New York. Photo / AP.
Winona Ryder attends the premiere of HBO's The Plot Against America in New York. Photo / AP.
Simon, who created and oversaw the show with long-time creative partner Ed Burns, is philosophical about whether television has the power to change minds.
But he hopes it will at least spark discussion "about the American capacity for totalitarianism, which has always been with us. There have been moments where the vulnerability of what we've constructed in a constitutional democracy has been made apparent."
It's tempting to imagine that making something with such political urgency must provide some emotional catharsis for Simon. No such luck.
"I just stay angry," he says. "I enjoy it. It's my natural state."
When: Sky's Neon streaming platform and SoHo channel next Tuesday
DAVID SIMON'S GREATEST HITS
Simon has worked on a raft of acclaimed TV shows. Dominic Corry revisits five of the best.
Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99)
This groundbreaking cop drama was based on Simon's 1991 non-fiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, written after the then-Baltimore Sun crime reporter spent 12 months shadowing the Baltimore homicide squad. Simon didn't create the show, but wrote several episodes, marking his first foray into television.
The Wire (2002-08)
Following his Emmy-winning mini-series, the Baltimore drug world exposé The Corner (also based on a non-fiction book that Simon co-authored), Simon created this thematically-aligned show that went well beyond cops and drug dealers to examine the education system, journalism, media and local politics.
Simon turned his eye to the Iraq war for this seven-part adaptation of Evan Wright's book, written after Wright was embedded with the Marine Corps during the early days of the US invasion. The show didn't make a huge splash at the time but has risen in regard since it first aired.
Treme (2010-13)
New Orleans' attempts to rebuild following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina came under the spotlight in this four-season drama that took its name from the neighbourhood where much of it was set. The area's vibrant music and culinary cultures were also explored.
The Deuce (2017-19)
No stranger to vice, Simon chronicled the mainstreaming of the sex industries in this three-season drama set principally around New York's seedy 42nd St area during the 1970s and 80s. Prostitution, pornography and the cleaning up of Manhattan made for one of Simon's most eye-opening shows yet.
