Now here’s something to get you drooling. I’m still mopping up the strings of saliva from my keyboard, if truth be told. I know that’s a horrible mental image for you, and my reaction to this news surprised me too – I haven’t been this excited since I last ate a Peanut Butter KitKat.

It seems that Olympic-winning US cable network HBO, always a barometer of quality in TV Land, has hired newly-crowned best Director In The World Ever, Martin Scorsese, and executive producer of current HBO and ITV2 series Entrourage (not to mention one of Scorsese’s stars in the pretty ace swearfest The Departed), Mark Wahlberg (pictured here at an MTV event… he does get around you know), to work on a new drama series.

Now you know why I can hardly contain myself.

The project is being developed from the book Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, which, frankly, is a bit of a mouthful. We’re hoping HBO cuts the title down to Boardwalk Empire, or even The Birth, which would be far more enigmatic,

We’re promised that the series will chronicle the journey the East Coast city undertook, from its early days as a quiet seaside health resort to the entertainment, gambling, no-holds barred hotbed it is today. We’re also promised plenty of juicy backroom politics and power struggles. And, if Scorsese has anything to do with it, there will be platefuls of violence and men shouting at each other. I can hardly wait, even though this does like an attempt by HBO to usher in a new Noo Joizee-based series to replace the departing Sopranos.