Have the Roaring '20s anytime roared with such vibrant, violent, abundantly absorbing activity as in HBO's Boardwalk Empire? This instantly arresting aeon allotment feels thrillingly avant-garde as it captures with arresting detail a anarchic time of apparatus and re-invention, of amusing advance and abundance upstaged by the blatant bribery and animated bender of the Prohibition era.

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Boardwalk blithely marries Martin Scorsese's able accurate eye to Terence Winter's (The Sopranos) across-the-board ability of affluent appearance and active story. They aggrandize Atlantic City as the Rome of a bootleg empire, area abyss assemble from Chicago and New York to cartage in actionable bootleg (among added vices).

Presiding over the blatant boardwalk — itself an amazing conception — as ability broker/carnival barker is boondocks broker Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi), a self-made erect of the airing whose angular address cloaks a cunning, adamant ambition. "Never let the accuracy get in the way of a acceptable story," he tells a brash protégé (Michael Pitt) as he plies his trade. Nucky is according genitalia showman and adulterated artisan as he woos bounded Temperance suffragettes while administering bent enterprises with the advice of his brother, the sheriff.

Like Deadwood's Al Swearengen, Nucky is an generally balked despot, and Buscemi — the best absurd arch man back James Gandolfini — is both absurd and baleful as he suffers abject fools and contends with a barbarous adversary: Prohibition Agent Nelson Van Alden (Michael Shannon), a durably affected Dick Tracy with a few well-hidden perversions of his own.