From David Simon (HBO’s “Treme” and “The Wire”) and Paul Haggis (“Crash”), the HBO Miniseries presentation SHOW ME A HERO debuts its first two parts back-to-back SUNDAY, AUG. 16 (8:00-10:00 p.m. ET/PT), followed by two parts on both of the subsequent Sundays – Aug. 23rd and 30th – at the same time.
In an America generations removed from the greatest civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the young mayor of a mid-sized American city is faced with a federal court order that says he must build a small number of low-income housing units in the white neighborhoods of his town. His attempt to do so tears the entire city apart, paralyzes the municipal government and, ultimately, destroys the mayor and his political future.
Based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Lisa Belkin, the miniseries explores notions of home, race and community through the lives of elected officials, bureaucrats, activists and ordinary citizens in Yonkers, NY.
The cast includes Oscar Isaac (“Inside Llewyn Davis,” “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens”) as Mayor Nick Wasicsko; Catherine Keener (Oscar® nominee for “Capote” and “Being John Malkovich”) as longtime East Yonkers resident Mary Dorman; Alfred Molina (“Love Is Strange,” HBO’s “The Normal Heart”) as Councilman Henry J. Spallone; Winona Ryder (Oscar® nominee for “Little Women” and “The Age of Innocence”) as Councilwoman Vinni Restiano; LaTanya Richardson-Jackson (“Blue Bloods,” “The Watsons Go to Birmingham”) as housing project resident Norma O’Neal; Bob Balaban (“The Grand Budapest Hotel,” HBO’s “Recount”) as U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand; Jim Belushi (“The Defenders,” “According to Jim”) as incumbent Yonkers Mayor Angelo Martinelli, who lost his bid for a seventh term to Nick Wasicsko; and Jon Bernthal (“The Wolf of Wall Street”) as NAACP attorney Michael Sussman.
Lisa Belkin was a New York Times reporter in the late 1980s, when Yonkers, a city of 200,000 located just north of The Bronx and nearly 80% white, was suddenly confronted by a politically unpopular reality. A lawsuit undertaken by the U.S. Justice Department and the NAACP had proven definitively that Yonkers officials had used federal housing funds to purposely segregate the city for decades, and while elected officials vowed to appeal that ruling, even the city’s own lawyers saw little chance it could be overturned on the merits.
