Show Me a Hero (2015)

Six parts that HBO aired as two-hour blocks on consecutive Sundays, so three evenings will do it. Based on Lisa Belkin's nonfiction book, it covers the Yonkers housing fight that began when federal courts ordered public housing built on the white, middle-class side of the city. Oscar Isaac won a Golden Globe as Nick Wasicsko, the young mayor who took office in 1987 and was swallowed by the crisis, and Paul Haggis directs with unusual restraint. It sounds like civics homework, and the zoning meetings are long, but the series gives equal time to the residents waiting for those homes, which is what makes it land. Sad rather than brutal, and still painfully relevant.