Show of the week: Boardwalk Empire

Created by Terence Winter, a writer for the The Sopranos, and executive-produced by Martin Scorsese, this period crime epic consciously echoes The Godfather and Scorsese’s own Gangs of New York and Goodfellas. Steve Buscemi ably anchors the show as an Atlantic City racketeer who treads a tightrope between crime and conscience. Though the pilot, which Scorsese himself directed, teems with authentic detail, it successfully conveys a heightened reality—less a portrait of the Prohibition era than a feverish dream about it. Sunday, Sept. 19, at 9 p.m., HBO