HBO drama ‘Boardwalk Empire’ a spectacle for the imagination

It turns out there was something to those obnoxious commercials all those years ago: There really is a difference between TV and HBO.

After all, TV wouldn't launch an extravagant drama with a sprawling cast of characters set in Prohibition-era Atlantic City. TV certainly wouldn't spend a reported $18 million on the pilot episode alone. And TV absolutely, positively wouldn't be able to get Martin Scorsese to help develop it and direct that first episode.

But HBO would -- and did -- with "Boardwalk Empire" (9 p.m. today), the fall's most engrossing, ridiculously ambitious new series, cable or otherwise.

There are plenty of other worthy, high-profile cable series this fall, including:

■ FX's currently airing "Sons of Anarchy" (10 p.m. Tuesdays), "Terriers" (10 p.m. Wednesdays) and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (10 p.m. Thursdays).

■ "Dexter" (9 p.m. Sept. 26, Showtime).

■ "Bored to Death" (10 p.m. Sept. 26, HBO) and "Eastbound & Down" (10:30 p.m. Sept. 26, HBO).

■ "Luther" (10 p.m. Oct. 17, BBC America), an intense new detective drama starring the great Idris Elba.

■ "The Walking Dead" (10 p.m. Oct. 31, AMC), based on the graphic novel about a zombie apocalypse.

But nothing really captures the imagination quite like "Boardwalk Empire."

The riveting drama tells the intertwined stories of corrupt county treasurer Enoch "Nucky" Thompson (Steve Buscemi); Nucky's driver, Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), a Princeton dropout who sees the vast wealth all around him and dreams of calling some of it his own; and Margaret Schroeder (Kelly Macdonald), a proud, proper Irish immigrant in whom Nucky takes a special interest.

And in doing so, "Boardwalk Empire" plays like a mashup of HBO's greatest hits. The gangsters of "The Sopranos." The lush, historical beauty of "Deadwood." Michael Kenneth Williams, better known as Omar from "The Wire," even turns up as bootlegger Chalky White.

The drama opens in 1920, on the eve of Prohibition, with Nucky's toasting "those beautiful ignorant bastards" in Congress who are about to make him wealthier than ever. Nucky runs casinos and brothels, but he realizes the real money is about to be in bootlegging. And Nucky's never met an opportunity he didn't exploit.

"He's the county treasurer, but he lives like a pharaoh. The entire eighth floor of the Ritz. ... There isn't a single business he doesn't get a part of, nor a public employee who doesn't pay for the right to hold his job," says Michael Shannon, who's so perfectly cast as Prohibition agent Nelson Van Alden, you'd swear he'd just been thawed out after 90 years on ice.

But that's just one of dozens of examples of "Boardwalk Empire's" meticulous attention to detail.

The famed Atlantic City boardwalk itself is slavishly re-created and a marvel to gaze at, complete with saltwater taffy merchants, a palmist and a room full of incubators where for 25 cents, you can, as the sign says, "see babies that weigh less than 3 pounds!"

So many exquisitely dressed extras dance the night away at Babette's Supper Club, it's tough not to hear the ka-chinging of cash registers echoing off each period tuxedo and gown.

It's as though the show's producers were engaged in some sort of arms race with "Mad Men" to see who could cram the most historically accurate detail into every corner of the screen.

"Boardwalk Empire" eventually broadens its scope to include everything from the rise of the Klan to the suffragette movement. Real-life figures Al Capone (Stephen Graham), Charles "Lucky" Luciano (Vincent Piazza) and Arnold Rothstein (Michael Stuhlbarg), the gambler believed to be behind the throwing of the 1919 World Series, are soon sucked in by "Boardwalk Empire's" gravitational pull.

And holding the whole thing together is Buscemi, in a career-defining role. His Nucky is charismatic, beloved and feared, yet the strain that comes with being the most powerful man in Southern New Jersey, if not the entire state, is beginning to show through. The man clearly has a lot on his plate, even if that plate costs more than many of his constituents' homes.

Putting up with his vulgar, dim-bulb girlfriend (Paz de la Huerta) while finding Mrs. Schroeder a job and keeping his feelings for her in check. Hosting a command performance by comedian Eddie Cantor (Stephen DeRosa) and trying to impress friends with an evening of entertainment by Hardeen -- "Houdini's brother," Nucky insists, "but he's just as good." The man can barely walk down that gorgeous, vibrant boardwalk without being hassled for a favor.

The primary reason to tune in, though, is still the sheer expenses-be-damned spectacle of it all.

Bringing this magical, decadent wonderland to life is most definitely the sort of thing TV wouldn't even dream of attempting.

But "Boardwalk Empire" will make you wish it did.

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@ reviewjournal.com.