Review: Deuce's decay a real delight

James Franco stars in The Deuce.

There has always been something strangely attractive and even romantic about the sex-and-drug underbelly of the New York City of the 1970s, at least to those of us who have only been able to know it from the incredible images and stories it has thrown off.

The flouting of both the law and most societal taboos right in the bright, garbage-strewn heart of that crime-ridden city-on-the-edge-of-chaos stands in such contrast to today's sharply ordered, despot-ruled den-of-the-super-rich that they are like two separate places, sharing just a patch of land and a lot of the same buildings.

In The Deuce, the new series from creator of The Wire David Simon, the shape and feel of that earlier city is so tangible, so pungent, that by the end of the opening movie-length episode, you could easily believe you had been shown to a smoking seat in a Pan Am Boeing 707, flown for 32 hours, had three stopovers, and landed at Kennedy Airport back in 1971.

The opening episode shows occasional shots of the wealthy New York that has always existed - even through the worst of the city's grand 1970s decay. There's one aerial shot of Manhattan, taking in the bulk of the famous skyline including the gleaming, not-then-complete towers of the World Trade Center - but mostly we're deep down at street level, in and around Times Square in the city's grime and sleaze, which is easily the more satisfying view.

It's a place that's heaving with trash, wild fashion, thick streams of long, wide cars and lightbulb-framed theatre marquees advertising seedy and sensational and sometimes-misspelled features.

The Deuce's creator David Simon is best-known for making the most compelling and brilliant epic television series of the modern age, The Wire - a five season overview of how a city runs and how it falls apart.

In that show, Simon demonstrated his particular genius for understanding the lives of people on and around the hard face of crime. It's easy to think that with the pimps and prostitutes of The Deuce he's going to do much the same thing in a different setting, and maybe he will, but it's already striking, one episode in, just how much more of the place we have already seen and how much more important that place is to the whole shebang.

The Deuce is so drenched in 1970s New York City that you could drown in it. You can feel its importance in every life and everything that happens, shaping characters' decisions, actions, hopes and understandings of what's possible.

Everywhere there's the city - its bars, apartments, homes, public places, moustaches and clothes, but most especially its streets, on which the camera often seems to be yet another strolling character, taking the viewer right there deep inside the scene.

The transportation of viewer to place is so intense that choosing to watch The Deuce is like deliberately choosing a failed democratic state as the location for your next holiday. It's not going to be fun, in the traditional sense, but you can be pretty sure it'll give you some great stories.