Destiny in the Desert

On an early afternoon in his office at Hollywood Centerstudios, Manhattan creator Sam Shaw jokes that he's "deep in the salt mines," banging out the season-two premiere of his 1940S-set series.

But he might as well be burrowed in a Los Alamos military bunker from yesteryear.

"I feel like I'm in a catacomb of old out-of-print books about nuclear physics and the history of the Second World War and the geography of New Mexico," Shaw says of his immersion into the once-clandestine Manhattan Project and the race to build the first atomic bomb.

"I've embarked on a research voyage into the past, and our show is steeped in period details. But oddly, we find ourselves telling stories that seem to speak as much to the present moment as they do to the past."

Perhaps that all-too-relevant theme of government secrecy in the name of protecting its populace explains the appeal of the drama that has become a tent-pole success for the WGN America network.