United Kingdom, May 29 -- J.K. Simmons is to star in new MGM+ series 'The Westies'.

The 70-year-old actor will lead the crime drama - co-created by Chris Brancato and Michael Panes - which is set in the early 1980s when the construction of the Jacob Javitz Convention Center on the Westies' home turf in Hell's Kitchen provides the Irish-American organised crime gang with a financial windfall.

Despite being outnumbered 50-to-one by the Five Families of the Italian Mafia, the Westies' legendary brutality and cunning have given them the leverage necessary to share the spoils through a fragile detente.

But internal conflict between the brash younger generation and the old-school leadership threatens to set a match to this powder keg, which ...