David Schwimmer's New AMC Show Is "Like Big Night Meets The Sopranos"

Will AMC have another Breaking Bad on its hands with Feed the Beast? The upcoming series sounds like it may be just as dark as Walter White's saga -- only this time, the main characters will be cooking meat instead of cooking meth.

Feed the Beast, which follows two best friends (David Schwimmer and Jim Sturgess) who open a restaurant together, is a "combination of crime and cooking and wonderful, character-driven stories, with deep themes like fatherhood and abandonment," Schwimmer tells TVGuide.com.

Schwimmer plays Tommy Moran, an alcoholic widower who also happens to be a sommelier. ("The research is brutal," Schwimmer jokes. "I have to drink so much wine.") The series begins a year after Tommy's wife was killed in a tragic hit-and-run accident, with Tommy struggling to raise his 10-year-old son TJ (Elijah Jacob), who hasn't spoken since witnessing his mother's death. "It's a guy whose life has pretty much been shattered, and he's trying to put the pieces back together," Schwimmer says of his character.

David Schwimmer, Jim Sturgess sign up for AMC's new restaurant drama

When Tommy's best friend, world-class chef Dion Patras (Sturgess), is released from prison, he crashes with Tommy and proposes that the two go into business together - which might just be exactly what Tommy needs to pull himself out of his depressive slump. "It's his friend who really kind of gets him to reignite the dream they've always had of opening a restaurant together," Schwimmer says. "So it's really about these two guys - really broken, fractured souls, and best friends - trying to put their lives back together. And the embodiment of that is the launch of a restaurant in The Bronx."

But it's not all fun and food - unbeknownst to Tommy, Dion's real motivation in opening the restaurant is to repay his debt to the mob. The two pals quickly find themselves immersed in a criminal underbelly that may test their loyalty to each other.

"It's quite funny at times, in a very dark way, and quite violent at other times. ... It's kind of like Big Night meets The Sopranos," Schwimmer says, referencing the mouthwatering 1996 film about two brothers who run an Italian restaurant. "It's a great, really complex tragic farce."

Feed the Beast is expected to premiere in late May on AMC. Check out a first-look photo here: