As laid out by Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12th step toward recovering from addiction includes carrying the message of recovery to fellow addicts. And since that doesn’t preclude making a television show about the process, Robert Downey Jr. has put his production company’s money (and presumably his own experience with rehab and recovery) behind an in-development Showtime series focusing on a residential-treatment facility in 1980s Venice Beach. With a pilot from Justified and Orange Is The New Black writer Gary Lennon, the series contains all the traces of a mid-’10s prestige drama: OITNB-style central setting (the type that’s being put to tremendous use on the current season of Orphan Black), a period backdrop that The Americans and Halt And Catch Fire are bringing to vividly beige life, and all the illicit substances necessary to make the XTC cuts on the soundtrack sound really fucking good. If the still-untitled series receives the greenlight, it could pose a recovery scenario for renewal-addled Showtime, which might have to kick the self-destructive habit of allowing all of its series to run for eight seasons in order to give the series a spot on its schedule. After all, they do say that the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
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