Boardwalk Empire 1x01

This Fall HBO brought a new series to the American TV screens, Boardwalk Empire, about Prohibition Era Atlantic City, N.J. It is created by Terence Winter (The Sopranos), and co-produced with Martin Scorsese and Mark Wahlberg. It stars Steve Buscemi as Atlantic County’s corrupt treasurer and hypocrite politician Enoch “Nucky” Thompson (based on the historical kingpin Enoch Johnson), who pledges his heartfelt support to the suffragettes of the Temperance League, minutes before he swears to his fellow hotshots that even if Prohibition will turn the country dry, he will keep Atlantic City “as wet as a mermaid’s twat.” The décors are on gloriously grand operatic scale; we get arrogant Rolls-Royces and stately abodes, flirty flappers and blackface Dixie-land, comedy and cabaret, dirty dancing and midgets boxing, contraband dealings and moonshine bootleggers, dangerous gangsters in fabulous fashion plus humorless Federal Agents and their footsoldiers in the war against illegal liquor. It is January 1920 and Enoch Thompson fully intends to reap the benefits of the Prohibition, dealing in contraband and moonshine. Conveniently, Atlantic City’s sheriff is Nucky’s younger brother Eli. Thompson has invited high level gangsters from New York and Chicago to talk business. Meanwhile, Thompson’s protégé, Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), has returned from the Great War with Gerry shrapnel in his leg and ambitions as dark as his experience in the trenches. Waiting outside the mobster convention, he happens upon one of Big Jim Colosimo’s low-level henchmen, Al Capone, who has ambitions to match Jimmy’s. Together they rob a shipment of whiskey off New York gangster Arnold Rothstein and kill several of his men, while they tipped off the Feds about Mickey Doyle’s bootlegging operation. From the looks of this pilot episode, the Cricket will be cheeping cheerfully about this show. Thanks Zory!