David Schwimmer, Jim Sturgess are ready to 'Feed the Beast'

NEW YORK — It's Restaurant Wars, with a new twist.

Feed the Beast, AMC's latest drama, stars David Schwimmer and Jim Sturgess as childhood pals, both beset by misfortune, who team to open an upscale Greek restaurant in the their South Bronx neighborhood.  Based on a Danish series loosely translated as Broke, the series premieres Sunday at 10 ET/PT before moving to its regular Tuesday-at-10 slot on June 7.

The show "appealed to me on many, many levels," says executive producer Clyde Phillips. "It has flawed characters, impossible dreams. I grew up in the meat business: my dad was a butcher, and a bit of a crook. And what’s more appealing than writing about damaged people?"

Schwimmer plays Tommy Moran, an alcoholic sommelier, whose wife (seen in flashback) was killed in a car accident, leaving their young son TJ (Elijah Jacob) — who witnessed her death — mute and wracked with guilt.  Sturgess (Across the Universe) is Dion Patras, a coke-addict rockstar chef, fresh from a jail stint after burning down the restaurant they worked in, leaving him indebted to a mobster to the tune of a half-million dollars.

Together they're trying to rebound and achieve their dream, but infidelities, betrayals, a sadistic crime boss nicknamed the Tooth Fairy (Mad Men's Michael Gladis) and other surprises get in their way. There's mordant humor, but it's not exactly a barrel of laughs: "There's a lot of anger and loneliness and sadness between us," Schwimmer says.

Tommy is "a broken guy trying to put his life back together, and he needs help from his best friend, who pulls him up out of a ditch," he says. "He's a guy who's grieving, and just not in the world of the living. His emergence from that place of depression and grief is reflected in the creation of the restaurant," whose decrepit shell serves as Tommy's apartment in the series opener. "It's a unique flavor combo of psychological drama, dark comedy, violent crime and cooking." Lorenza Izzo plays a potential love interest for Tommy; they meet in grief counseling. And John Doman is Tommy's racist dad.

"Dion is just going to create trouble wherever he goes," Sturgess says. "He's a car wreck of a person, who’s going to build up a restaurant with his alcoholic friend: that’s exciting!" Sturgess went to cooking school to learn the trade, and the show hired Top Chef winner and former restaurant owner Harold Dieterle to coach him in chef-like behavior.

Phillips, whose last stints were producing Dexter and the final seasons of Nurse Jackie for Showtime, is up for the task.

"The challenge is when you take an unpredictable and impulsive character, who ordinarily in life you wouldn’t want to be around, how do you get that person into your living room every week?  How do you make Nurse Jackie, this woman who screwed over everything, including her life, and Dexter, who kills people, how do you feel for them enough to invite you into their home every Sunday night?"

Will Tommy and Dion be similarly welcomed? We'll find out soon enough.