Since its July premiere on WGN America, the new TV series “Manhattan,” shot in SFUAD’s very own backyard, has fans and critics exploding with positive feedback and heightened anticipation. TV critic Ed Bark of Unclebarky.com says the network’s second dramatic series is a “cerebral, character-driven morality play in which the stakes couldn’t be higher.” From Denver Post Television, critic Joanne Ostrow calls the show “Harvard with sand,” a “well-crafted, historically based drama” that “works its magic through a talented cast and a taut script.” In an interview conducted by Fox6Now news, “Manhattan” TV star John Benjamin Hickey (“The Good Wife,” “The Big C”) comments that writer Sam Shaw has taken an “imaginative leap of faith” in creating a show that could have been “historically accurate [to] this time and place and instead has focused on the emotional truth.” Unlike the city landscape of Woody Allen’s 1979 romance Manhattan, the “Manhattan” TV series takes place during WWII in the isolated desert of Los Alamos New Mexico, in which the race to create the most destructive weapon of war burdens top scientists and their families with maddening pressure and secrecy. With series like “Breaking Bad” and “Longmire” (recently cancelled pending new network ownership) in the New Mexico’s back pocket, “Manhattan” has kept the state thriving in network drama, bringing in names like director Thomas Schlamme (“The West Wing,” “Murder in the First”), writer Sam Shaw (“Masters of Sex”), and actors John Benjamin Hickey, Olivia Williams (The Sixth Sense, Hyde Park on the Hudson), Daniel Stern (Home Alone, City Slickers) and Christopher Denham (Argo) to New Mexico. In an interview with Jackalope, creator and writer Sam Shaw with director Thomas Schlamme describe how the historical drama relates to New Mexico’s Manhattan Project and what they hope the locals will get out of it. Actors Daniel Stern (scientist Glen...