​“Tyrant,” set to debut June 24 on FX, starts off as a family drama when a man returns home to his family in a fictional Middle East country. Pretty quickly, however, he finds himself in the middle of a political drama. The lead character, Bassam Al Fayeed (“Barry” in his Americanized life), is the younger son of the country’s dictator who goes home to attend a family member’s wedding, bringing his American family along with him.

The earliest view of the show was cryptic at best, portraying Al Fayeed in the desert letting sand slip between his fingers. Since then, FX has been teasing out more information about the show with slightly more background.

The Hollywood Reporter’s story this week talks about how the cable net has been visualizing and selling its summer drama. The series comes from a writing/producing team who claims “Homeland,” “24” and “Lost” as credits, so FX put plenty of faith in them, but executives were also worried about how people would perceive the show. In testing, they found that the script elicited reactions that fell into three groups: Islamophobes; Islamophiles, who assumed it would be a negative portrayal of the region; and some who were open to the idea of the show. FX’s challenge became convincing the first two groups to join the third.

Without a well-known cast to hype, the cabler then set out to focus on the region’s natural beauty, using Tunisia as a backdrop for its fictional country of Baladi. Teases took place in the sand dunes, and key art and billboards show the lead character looking somewhat out of place, wearing distinctly Western clothes while standing on a rug in the sand, for example:

FX has been slowly releasing more detail-filled promos as well, playing up the inner struggle of Al Fayeed as well as the Westerner-meets-Middle East culture clash:

Read more at The Hollywood Reporter.

Brief Take: “Tyrant” is only one of several cable series debuting this summer, hoping to make a mark on the increasingly crowded landscape of originals while expanding FX’s already-hot drama brand.

[Image courtesy of FX]

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