HBO’s The Deuce is no exercise in misplaced nostalgia — unlike Vinyl, it refuses to glamorize ’70s New York

The New Republic

“If nothing else, The Deuce shows the ’70s as a hell that no one should want to return to, even if it was a hotbed of creativity,” says Rachel Syme. She adds: “No one on The Deuce is having much fun. The sex isn’t prurient, but it isn’t always joyless. The clothes are mostly shabby, the porn shoots are low-budget, the bars are raucous only when a glam band rolls through. But importantly, everyone remains stuck on the same block, living shoulder to shoulder, forced to confront one another. The Deuce is about intractability and cycles; the vortex of poverty and pain that characterized the city in the bankrupt era. Some people manage to get out with plucky innovation; some never will.”

PLUS: The Deuce re-creates “this world so it can study it on a personal and communal level, rather than ogle it like a perv,” it’s impeccably acted, written, and directed, The Deuce’s dramatized climate of vice functions like the narcotics it so unflinchingly depicts, David Simon has created his most accessible work of humanism to date, it is TV that America needs to understand how we got where we are in 2017, The Deuce is the rightful heir to The Wire, the problem is the plot is either irrelevant or seemingly nonexistent, Campbell's Soup was used as stand-in for semen, David Simon explains why he wanted to tackle the ‘70s porn industry, how Breaking Bad director Michelle MacLaren ended up working on her first non-action project, why Maggie Gyllenhaal fought for a producing credit, and James Franco always wanted to work with David Simon, even trying to land a role in Show Me a Hero.