Ben Affleck and Matt Damon team up for new Boston-set crime drama

The channel has picked up a drama pilot called City on a Hill from the Oscar winners, who will executive produce the project.

i>Varietyreports that this was based on an original idea by Affleck and Chuck MacLean (Boston Strangler), who wrote the script. City on a Hill will give a fictional account of what was called the “Boston Miracle”, a police initiative to crack down on crime and corruption in the city.

The show is set in the early ’90s, when corruption and racism was the norm in Boston, and followed an African-American district attorney from Brooklyn who arrives in the city, advocating change. He form an unlikely alliance with a corrupt yet venerated FBI veteran who is invested in maintaining the status quo. The two take on a family of armoured car robbers in a case that eventually upends the city’s criminal justice system.

The pilot will be directed by Gavin O’Connor (The Accountant), who will serve as executive producer along with James Mangold (Logan) and Jennifer Todd (Memento) of Pearl Street Films. Pearl Street developed the project with IMG.

“City on a Hill is a gritty thriller about severe corruption and gangs, the type of series that takes you back and centres around the crime-riddled streets of Boston in the early 90s,” said Todd.

“Chuck wrote a pressure-cooker of a script steeped in the tribal codes of a Shakespeare play — family, blood, betrayal, honour,” said O’Connor. “His take on the ties that bind is handled with a deep honesty and insight. I see the show as a brawling thriller — and an intimate family drama — played out on the rough streets of Boston.”