Tyrant Ordered to Series by FX

FX has officially picked Tyrant, a drama from Homeland’s Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff and Six Feet Under‘s Craig Wright, up to series with an order of at least 10 episodes. The series is slated to debut in the summer of 2014, where it will join vampire thriller The Strain and crime drama The Bridge, with the latter soldiering on after a showrunner change last month.

““With Tyrant, Howard Gordon, Gideon Raff and Craig Wright have produced a beautiful television pilot that will be a groundbreaking television series. Tyrant introduces characters and a world that have never been explored in a dramatic television series format. There is a reason a bidding war broke out over this project: it grabs you as all great epics do and simply refuses to let go!” said FX Networks CEO John Landgraf.

Tyrant stars Adam Rayner (Hunted) as Bassam “Barry” Al Fayeed, the younger son of the dictator of a war-torn nation. After 20 years away from home, he decides to return for his nephew’s wedding and brings his American wife and children along on the journey. When he gets thrust back into the environment he grew up in, though, Barry is forced to confront the culture clash from having been away from his country’s familial and national politics for two decades. As much as he wants his family to know where he came from and the life that he gave up to come to the United States, allowing them to come to his country of origin might have been the worst move he could have made. The show also stars the likes of Jennifer Finnigan (Monday Mornings), Justin Kirk (Weeds), Ashraf Barhom (Clash of the Titans), Moran Atias (The Next Three Days), and Mehdi Dehbi (The Sun Assassinated).

Will you be watching Tyrant? Do you think the show sounds like a summer series? Can a show set primarily in the Middle East work on American television?