'American Rust' Trailer: Jeff Daniels Is The Troubled Police Chief Of A Depressed Eastown

Is it ‘Man Of Easttown,’ ‘True Maretective’? Showtime really looks like it loves the Pennsylvania Rust Belt and troubled cops, the same milieu of HBO’s recently acclaimed “Mare Of Easttown.” But coming off the wake of that series, is it going to look like some rehash of a very similar story? Their latest series is “American Rust,” a family drama starring Jeff Daniels. It’s about complicated and compromised chief of police Del Harris of a Pennsylvania Rust Belt town full of good people making bad choices (sound familiar?)

There’s also a darker wrinkle to it all. Daniels’s troubled chief of police character is forced to decide how far he’s willing to go when the son of the woman he loves is accused of murder (which also frankly, sounds a lot like “Mare Of Easttown,” at least to some degree when you consider what happened in the finale).

Jeff Daniels is coming off various television projects such as the Showtime miniseries “The Comey Rule,” Aaron Sorkin‘s media satire “The Newsroom,” “The Looming Tower,” and Netflix‘s hard-boiled western series “Godless” from Scott Frank (“The Queen’s Gambit“). His recent feature films include Ridley Scott‘s sci-fi survival flick “The Martian” starring Matt Damon and Danny Boyle‘s tech biopic “Steve Jobs” that starred Michael Fassbender as the Apple founder.

Maura Tierney co-stars with Daniels as his character’s love interest, She’s obviously known for projects such as “NewsRadio,” “E.R.,” Christopher Nolan‘s “Insomnia,” and “The Affair.”

Here’s the official synopsis from Showtime:

Award winners Jeff Daniels and Maura Tierney star in an unflinching new Showtime Original Series. In an economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, a complicated and compromised chief of police (Daniels) is forced to decide how far he’s willing to go when the son of the woman he loves (Tierney) is accused of murder. A harrowing journey into the lives of a small town with big secrets, where people are driven by loyalty, love and desperation – and bad choices come far too easy.

You can catch “American Rust”s premiere on Sunday, September 12 at 10/9c on Showtime and watch the first trailer below.