President EVIL

Winona Ryder and John Turturro star in a wartime drama that imagines a far-right regime in the White House

- SEAN MARLAND

NEW DRAMA

The Plot Against America

Tuesday, Sky Atlantic HD, 9pm & 10.10pm

David Simon and Ed Burns won a host of awards for their visceral portrayal of inner-city drug culture in The Wire, and now the acclaimed writers are tackling fascism in a dystopian new series based on a novel by Philip Roth.

The unsettling, alternate-reality tale begins in 1940 with America looking on in horror as the Nazis cut a brutal swathe across Europe. Meanwhile, reallife US aviator Charles Lindbergh, who completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic, is planning a similar far-right regime on American soil.

The nightmare scenario is put in motion after Lindbergh defeats Franklin D Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and moves into the White House.

‘In real life, Lindbergh had great boyish charm, he was a brave aviator, and was regarded as the greatest American hero of his generation,’ reveals Simon. ‘But he was also fundamentally a protofascist, and he very much admired Adolf Hitler.’

PREJUDICE

As Lindbergh’s presidency ushers in a wave of antiSemitism, Jewish Americans are forced to choose how they should react in the face of intolerance.