

But they have, and David Simon’s and Ed Burns’s six part HBO series has reached our shores. … He had the power that Trump as a reality show host and failed casino owner did not have.W e may never know what prompted two of the most sociopolitically concerned writers in modern television history to turn at this precise juncture to adapting Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America, which imagines an America that has elected a populist celebrity demagogue as president and begins to slide towards fascism. The show’s executive producer, Simon, who passed on adapting the book in 2013 because he didn’t think it was relevant, went for it in 2018 thinking it would resonate in the Trump era.Īt the New Yorker Festival last October, however, Simon quoted the author as warning him, “Never confuse Trump for Lindbergh.” Simon explained, “ was an astounding hero and an astonishing American icon after the flight. It’s the America Firsters-it’s their country,” says Bess in the trailer, evoking a phrase used by Charles Lindbergh and Donald Trump alike. Even though the book is from over a decade ago, it somehow feels perfectly suited to today’s political moment.

The plot and characters will stick pretty close to those in the book by the late Philip Roth. What’s the plot, exactly, and to what extent will it stick to the book?

Like many of our own families, the Levins are deeply divided over politics, a subject impossible to avoid in troubled times. Other cast members include David Krumholtz as Monty Levin, Michael Kostroff as Shepsie Tirschwell and Jacob Laval as Seldon Wishnow.

Other actors include Zoe Kazan, who plays Finkel’s younger sister Bess Levin, Morgan Spector as Bess’s insurance agent husband Herman Levin who’s determined to fulfill his American dream, Caleb Malis as their teenage son Sandy who comes to admire Lindbergh, Azhy Robertson as their younger son Philip, and Anthony Boyle as Herman’s orphaned nephew Alvin who wants to kill Nazis.
