Last year, the rebranded WGN America debuted two new series, each with a historical setting: the batshit insane Salem, and the far more demure Manhattan. Manhattan is set in 1943 Los Alamos, the site of the Manhattan Project, which saw the development of the atomic bomb. Everything is a secret, not only from public knowledge, but even among those working at the facility themselves, who are confined to a true need-to-know basis.

The first teaser for Season 2 (I haven’t had a chance to catch up with Season 1 yet, although I hear it’s really good! Too much good TV …) has the show’s main characters being asked “Are you good at keep secrets?” “Would you sacrifice your family for the good of the country?” “Have you ever had sexual relations with a communist?” And most importantly, “Have you ever conspired to destroy the world?” To that one the reply is: maybe.

Check out the trailer below, and find out “how much evil does it take to do good?” Manhattan stars John Benjamin Hickey, Olivia Williams, Ashley Zuckerman, Rachel Brosnahan, Daniel Stern, Harry Lloyd and Katja Herbers. The series will return this fall.


And here’s the synopsis for Season 2:

The series, created by Sam Shaw and directed by Emmy Award®-winning director Thomas Schlamme, follows the tangled lives of the residents of Los Alamos, New Mexico, as they race to detonate the first nuclear bomb in history.  Locked away in the world's most secretive city, the scientists and their families surrender their freedoms, compromise their marriages, and even sacrifice their sanity to end one bloody war and usher in another — the Cold War waiting just over the atomic horizon — all while foreign spies and a climate of paranoia threaten to destroy the project from within. 

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