THE DEUCE.

• Author: Brown, Elizabeth Nolan
• Position: TV

The sleazy streets of 1970s New York City have become a cinematic cliche at this point, standing in for so many shifts in social mores, sex, and the cityscape. HBO's The Deuce, created by David Simon (The Wire, Treme), explores how the era's commercial pornography boom changed this scene. Its hard-working and entrepreneurial heroes--James Franco as twin brothers, Maggie Gyllenhaal as independent streetwalker Candy, Dominique Fishback as the sweet and rapidly wising-up young sex worker Darlene--dared to craft a new way of making a living off meeting others' erotic needs while declaring their own worth.

Much in the show parallels more recent shifts in the sex trade brought about by the internet, and to the extent that The Deuce can...