Showtime Docuseries to Go Inside the Political ‘Circus’

NEW YORK: Showtime has greenlit a new documentary series, The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, which will give a real-time account of the 2016 U.S. presidential race.

The show is being produced in cooperation with Bloomberg Politics and features Bloomberg Politics managing editors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (co-authors of the New York Times best-sellers Game Change and Double Down and co-hosts of the nightly political show With All Due Respect on Bloomberg Television) and noted campaign strategist and media advisor Mark McKinnon. The Circus promises to cover events as they are happening, revealing the stories behind the headlines of this election. Set to premiere in January 2016, in advance of the Iowa caucuses, the series will follow multiple individual stories and key characters from the campaigns and capture their unique perspectives in weekly half-hour shows between January and November.

"Americans are captivated by the 2016 presidential election and a real-time political series of this nature has never been done before," said David Nevins, the president of Showtime Networks. "People don't want to wait a year to see how and why things played out and the impact they had. Everything today is immediate, so there's no better time to change the way American politics are covered. Mark and John are the preeminent chroniclers of the presidential scene with their deeply influential books and I'm thrilled that, along with Mark McKinnon, they will bring their years of expertise and the pedigree of Bloomberg Politics to Showtime in a truly dynamic and innovative way with The Circus."