My Sky + … SoHo in August

David Simon, the creator of The Wire and Treme, predicts no one will watch his new HBO series, Show Me a Hero, which premieres next month on SoHo.

“I don’t believe anyone’s going to watch this,” he told an interviewer for Grantland.

“You are not going to get zombie-like numbers for a story about 200 units of low-income housing being built on the east side of the Saw Mill Expressway and the racial strife that ensues.”

Directed by Paul Haggis, from the nonfiction book of the same name by Lisa Belkin, the six-part drama explores notions of home, race and community through the lives of elected officials, bureaucrats, activists and ordinary citizens in Yonkers, New York.

It stars Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis), Catherine Keener (Captain Phillips), Alfred Molina (An Education), Winona Ryder (Black Swan), LaTanya Richardson-Jackson (Blue Bloods), Bob Balaban (Moonrise Kingdom) and Jim Belushi (According to Jim).

According to Variety, “Show Me a Hero may be a period drama, but the trailer suggests that the upcoming HBO miniseries draws a lot of parallels to the current civil rights battle in our country.”

It will screen 8.30 Mondays from August 17, within 24 hours of its US broadcast.

SoHo’s only other significant newcomer for August is Hell on Wheels, which will screen 8.30 Wednesdays from August 12.

This will be the show’s fifth and final season but, like another AMC drama, it’s being split in half; seven episodes will screen this year and eight more in 2016.

The irony of Hell on Wheel’s long ride off into the sunset is the series has been drawing fewer viewers after dramatically improving in the third and fourth seasons.

As SoundonSight observed of its season premiere in the US at the weekend: “Hell on Wheels started as one man’s single-minded journey to avenge the death of his family.

“As the series enters its final season, though, it has been transformed into a deeply meditative look at a changing world, an intricate retelling of a brutal time in American history and powerful examination of the characters that helped create it.

“The writers now have the daunting task of honouring these characters, closing out an epic story, and giving fans a satisfying ending.”