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“Boardwalk Empire,” which debuts sometime next year,my edit - 2010 deals with gangsters in Atlantic City at the dawn of Prohibition in the 1920s. (Steve Buscemi plays a character based on famed Atlantic City fixer Nucky Johnson.) It comes from both Martin Scorsese (who directed the pilot) and key “Sopranos” producer Terence Winter.

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Game of Thrones

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Only got through 2 Boardwalk Empire eps last night, but I'm already hooked.

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sepinwall:Time for 3-hr HBO bloc to end TCA. First up: Boardwalk Empire (9/19). I've now seen six episodes. Totally lives up to expectations.

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"HBO is proud to take you to the Jersey Shore. Difference being, youre going to see great writing/directing/storytelling." -HBO publicist

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nprmonkeysee: if you're not pumped about BOARDWALK EMPIRE yet, please note: Omar Little. With guns. In period costume. Just saying.

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With "Boardwalk Empire" - which debuts Sept. 19, and which is far and away the best thing I've seen for this press tour, and probably going back many, many press tours - Scorsese and writer Terence Winter (David Chase's right-hand man on "The Sopranos" ) are telling a story that could, in success, last a decade.

Scorsese has told many gangster stories before, from the 19th century ("Gangs of New York" ) to the '60s and '70s ("Goodfellas" ) to today ("The Departed" ), and was drawn to Winter's script and the '20s milieu because it gave him a chance to show "the charting of this world" and the start of "America's love affair with the gangster as a sort of tragic hero."

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The series begins in Atlantic City, but its scope extends to Chicago and real-life gangsters like Johnny Torrio and Al Capone, New York and men like Rothstein and Lucky Luciano, and even down to the White House.

"Boardwalk Empire" is, in short, being asked to help make HBO into HBO again. "True Blood" has become the channel's biggest hit since "The Sopranos," but it's not entirely on-brand for the pay channel. With this setting, cast and creative team, "Boardwalk Empire" feels like a throwback to HBO's glory years of the early-mid '00s, before AMC and FX and Showtime all started chipping away as its position as the pre-eminent creator of prestige drama.

Having seen the first six "Boardwalk" episodes, I can say it lives up to the hype.

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So it’s a huge cast of characters. Just so many people and so many factions. Why did you want the scope to be this big, and why did you want to be telling the stories in Chicago at the same time?

It felt like Atlantic City was the focal point, and once Prohibition was enacted, the real Nucky was the guy who in 1928 sort of organized organized crime, finally got everybody to get from all over the country. So his reach politically went to Washington, D.C., really went right to the White House. His gangster reach went, once Prohibition was enacted, to New York to Chicago, etc. And because Capone and Torrio were such great characters and there was a natural connection there, I knew that Chicago would be part of this. I didn’t want to concoct reasons every week for these guys to be visiting Atlantic City, which is ludicrous, you know? They’d come there occasionally, so I said, "Well, we could actually go there or stories could play out there and they intersect or not, as the case may be." I think as long as it’s entertaining and it’s part of the natural storytelling, I don’t think people are going to call you on why you’re in Chicago. But as it turned out, those stories did intersect really well. Same thing with Rothstein. They had a lot of business together. Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. and there’s a lot of connections, so.

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Winter wrote most of the funniest “Sopranos” episodes (including “Pine Barrens”) and his black sense of humor is all over this show. There are beefs over jokes taken too far and gifts not properly appreciated and frequent tensions between New Jersey and New York.

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the scope is grander - spotlighting various corners of Atlantic City society, criminal and otherwise, and extending out to Chicago and Washington, D.C. - in a way that ultimately evokes other HBO dramas like “Deadwood” or “Rome” or “The Wire” more than it does the adventures of Tony and Carmela. “The Sopranos” was a character study and a cynical look at turn-of-the-millennium social decay. “Boardwalk Empire” is a more straightforward gangster story, and one that’s oddly optimistic even with all the violence. Tony lamented that he came in at the end of something, where Nucky is there at the start.

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Have the Roaring '20s ever roared with such vibrant, violent, extravagantly entertaining life as in HBO's Boardwalk Empire? This instantly captivating period piece feels thrillingly modern as it captures with remarkable detail a chaotic time of invention and re-invention, of social progress and prosperity upstaged by the gaudy corruption and jazzy debauchery of the Prohibition era.

Boardwalk brilliantly marries Martin Scorsese's virtuosic cinematic eye to Terence Winter's (The Sopranos) panoramic mastery of rich character and eventful story. They romanticize Atlantic City as the Rome of a bootleg empire, where gangsters converge from Chicago and New York to traffic in illegal hooch (among other vices).

It's the most purely — and impurely — enjoyable storytelling HBO has delivered in ages, like a movie that you never want to end. Considering how long prohibition lasted (an incredible 13 years), Boardwalk is likely to be dazzling us for quite some time.

Drink up.

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Only got through 2 Boardwalk Empire eps last night, but I'm already hooked.

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um, wasn't there just one last night they showed three times?

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Did you bother looking at the date of the post (7/28) or that is was a quote from a critic?

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