SERIES PREMIERE: This is WGN America’s second scripted drama series, and it’s even more ambitious than Salem. Manhattan is a period piece about the Manhattan Project, the top-secret development of the atomic bomb, but is unlike Oppenheimer, the superb miniseries from a previous generation. That drama starred Sam Waterston as the brilliant physicist in charge of the project, while Manhattan, at least initially, visits J. Robert Oppenheimer only peripherally, and focuses instead on those beneath him: rival team leaders of scientists seeking the fastest path to “the gadget,” as well as team members, spouses, even GIs assigned to the same top-secret isolated base. In the first two episodes sent for review, John Benjamin Hickey and Olivia Williams, as scientist Frank Winter and his botanist wife, stand out as intense and very memorable, while supporting players include Daniel Stern (in a rare non-comic role) and Richard Schiff. Other names worth mentioning are behind the scenes: creator Sam Shaw (Masters of Sex) and co-executive producer and director Thomas Schlamme (The West Wing).