Photo: Paul Schiraldi/HBO

Having been sufficiently reassured that it doesn’t have another Vinyl on its hands, HBO has renewed David Simon and George Pelacanos’ The Deuce for another season. That’s according to Variety, which also quotes co-creator Simon as saying with characteristic straightforwardness, “HBO is a serious outfit. And they don’t scare.” It’s a bit early for ratings numbers, but The Deuce has been a hit so far with critics, scoring a 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

The A.V. Club’s own Erik Adams and Danette Chavez are both fans, each giving the show’s first season an A- in their respective reviews. Chavez says Simon “spins dramatic gold from the hard-to-follow inner workings of a city and even harder-to-face realities, avoiding moral judgments despite regularly wading into vice, all while delivering the latest in appointment TV,” and Adams says it has “the finest, purest pilot of Simon’s second career.”