English Teacher
FX
Premieres: Sept. 2
Airs: Mondays at 10pm ET/PT
Who’s In It? Brian Jordan Alvarez, Enrico Colantoni, Sean Patton, Carmen Christopher
What’s It All About? A gay English teacher (Brian Jordan Alvarez) in Austin, Texas, tries to balance the personal, political and professional aspects of his life working among modern teenagers in the South and their demanding parents. “The show lives on the edge and we have fun there,” says Alvarez, who is also the creator, director and executive producer of the witty and bold new series. “We play in that gray area very specifically. And if we get in the editing room and it feels over the edge, then you just don’t put that into the show.” Adds fellow executive producer Paul Simms: “A lot of what the show is about also is the characters themselves within the show talking about what are we allowed to say anymore and what’s right and what’s wrong these days.”
The show is also a great watch for book nerds or former English majors. Says executive producer Dave King on the selection of literature referenced and taught to students: “We tried to make the books that they were reading thematically relevant. They often ended up being kind of surface-level relevant because we also needed the audience to get it very quickly. So, we had to go for classics mostly: Crime and Punishment, Love in the Time of Cholera.”