Netflix’s Narcos did strong work exploring the cocaine explosion of the 1980s, and FX now aims to look through a very different lens. The network has officially made room to greenlight John Singleton’s long-developing crack-cocaine drama Snowfall, even delivering the first photo.

The first 10-episode season follows Damson Idris as Franklin Saint, a “street entrepreneur” raised in South Central but educated in the Valley, and “determined to raise his station in life through whatever means necessary.” Boyz n the Hood director Singleton wrote the pilot with executive producers Dave Andron and Eric Amadio, chronicling the early days of the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles. So reads the synopsis and cast list, followed by a photo:

Los Angeles 1983. A storm is coming and its name is cocaine. Snowfall is a one-hour drama set against the infancy of the crack cocaine epidemic and its ultimate radical impact on the culture as we know it. The story follows numerous characters on a violent collision course, including: Franklin Saint (Damson Idris), young street entrepreneur on a quest for power; Gustavo Zapata (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), a Mexican wrestler caught up in a power struggle within a crime family; Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson), a CIA operative running from a dark past who begins an off-book operation to fund the Nicaraguan Contras; and Luica Villanueva (Emily Rios), the self-possessed daughter of a Mexican crime lord.

John Singleton FX Snowfall
Michael Yarish
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Production will begin in October for a 2017 debut, so FX has time to get that Emmy cabinet polished again.

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