'Manhattan' to premiere on WGN America July 27

LOS ANGELES, May 16 (UPI) -- WGN America says it plans to start airing Manhattan, its second original scripted series, this summer.

Created and written by Sam Shaw and directed by Thomas Schlamme, the13-episode drama is set in "the world of deception, danger and sacrifices that characterized one of the best-kept secrets of all time: the mission to build the world's first atomic bomb," the network said in a news release Thursday.

The show is set to premiere July 27. It co-stars John Benjamin Hickey, Olivia Williams, Daniel Stern, Ashley Zukerman, Rachel Brosnahan, Katja Herbers, Alexia Fast, Christopher Denham, Harry Lloyd, Michael Chernus and Eddie Shin.

"Fueled by mystery and suspense, Manhattan is set in the 1940s in a town whose very existence is classified," a synopsis said.

"Frank Winter and his team of brilliant but flawed scientists have been recruited to work on a project even they could know nothing about until their arrival. Once inside 'The Hill,' a middle-class bubble on a dusty foothill in the New Mexico desert, they begin to sense that this is no ordinary assignment. In fact, they are living in a town with the world's highest concentration of geniuses, yet it can't be found on any map -- a place where men and women are torn between duty and their moral values, husbands and wives conceal the truth from each other and their families, the military keeps secrets from the scientists they chaperone, and the scientists keep secrets from each other."

WGN America's first original, scripted series was Salem.