Last night, I caught the first episode of The Bronx is Burning, an 8-week dramatic miniseries being shown, of all places, on ESPN.
WOW.
This is the sort of quality that I’ve come to expect from an HBO series — I guess that ESPN is showing it for the sports angle….but even if you’re not a huge fan of sports, you should check this out. The miniseries (based on Jonathan Mahler’s non-fiction book) is about the summer of 1977 in New York City, when the Yankees were going after their first World Series win in 15 years, with a massive amount of tension, drama and conflict going on behind-the-scenes — and while the city was gripped in the panic surrounding the Son of Sam killings. The show bounces back and forth between those two narratives, that defined that summer for New Yorkers.
Well worth checking out — the first episode is available for free online, and the regularly-scheduled episodes air on Tuesday nights, starting next week with episode 2.