Amin Joseph and Damson Idris in "Snowfall"

The illegal drug trade is big business in America, and stories scraped from that underbelly have proven to make equally big television. Several acclaimed series in recent memory have explored the secret, violent economy that serves America's insatiable demand for forbidden chemistry, from the heroin-steeped "The Wire" on HBO to Walter White and his painfully blue crystal meth in AMC's awards beast "Breaking Bad" to Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar in "Narcos" on Netflix.

In 2017, FX got into the game with "Snowfall," a chronicle of the crack cocaine epidemic in 1980s Los Angeles, when a new form of the drug began to overtake the traditional powdered variety in popularity. Crack possessed several qualities that made it alarmingly suited for mass consumption: it was powerful, cheap, and it could be smoked instead of snorted. Catch a new episode of the gritty crime drama when it airs Thursday, Aug. 2, on FX.

"Snowfall" comes from co-creators Dave Andron, Eric Amadio and John Singleton. Of that bunch, it's Singleton's name that rings out the loudest. He's been telling stories about the disastrous intersection of promising American youth and the drug trade since his directorial debut, "Boyz in the Hood," in 1991.

It's appropriate, then, that "Snowfall" is full of young talent. The narrative alternates between the perspectives of several characters, but is anchored by neophyte drug dealer Franklin Saint, played with arresting cool by British newcomer Damson Idris. Season 1 followed Franklin's progression from a part-time marijuana dealer to an almost-accidental coke dealer, peaking with his calculated embrace of crack cocaine and its diabolically salable features.

Franklin has a huge dose of the qualities people associate with success. He's a grinder and a dreamer, an entrepreneur with a knack for seizing opportunities the instant they surface. The show won't let you forget that Franklin is a product of his environment. He spent season 1 opening the doors that were available for him to open, but in a more forgiving, opportunity-rich time or place, his admirable traits could have been spent on ventures less dangerous, destructive and illegal than slinging crack.

Franklin does what he does to provide for his family, and they are people the show wants you to meet. Michael Hyatt ("The Wire") plays Franklin's mother, Cissy, and Amin Joseph ("Baywatch," 2017) plays his uncle, Jerome. Cissy wants Franklin to resist the call of the streets and rise out of the pain and loss endemic to a gangster lifestyle. Jerome isn't quite as idealistic; it was he who got his nephew started out as a marijuana dealer. While he initially stonewalls Franklin's efforts to become a purveyor of harder drugs, eventually Jerome relents and becomes a player in his nephew's burgeoning cocaine enterprise.

Michael Hyatt stars in "Snowfall"

Elsewhere in Los Angeles, Lucia Villanueva (Emily Rios, "Breaking Bad") is the niece of a drug lord and the self-appointed successor to the family business. Lucia is overlooked as a candidate for a leadership position in the cartel hierarchy because she's a woman, and with the backup of wrestler-turned-enforcer "El Oso" (Sergio Peris-Mencheta, "Resident Evil: Afterlife," 2010), she labored through the first season of "Snowfall" to seize a bigger role for herself within the cartel's power structure.

The third central POV in "Snowfall" is that of Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson, "The Night Of"), a CIA operative who isn't afraid to get dirty for the sake of his cause and who ends up becoming a significant importer of cocaine to establish connections he feels are necessary for implicating major players in the international drug trade.

Critical praise for the first season of "Snowfall" was judicious, but all the ingredients are in place to make the second season a much more potent mix. Season 1 did a lot right. The cast earned high marks from top to bottom (with extra kudos going to Rios and Idris), and the show was lauded for looking and sounding legit. The production team depended on dialect and demeanor coaches with L.A. roots to make sure their actors felt like the real deal, and the show was filmed on location in South Central L.A. to guarantee richly authentic visuals.

Special care was taken to dress shooting locations. Singleton reportedly sought to have security bars removed from the windows of buildings to accurately depict early '80s South Central, before the consequences of the crack epidemic turned the area into an urban war zone in the imagination of the American public.

For all it managed to get right, "Snowfall" also took heat for its meandering pace and divergent storylines that never quite seemed to connect. With season 1's introductory work out of the way, season 2 is poised to address these flaws -- characters are finally on course to cross paths in big ways. In FX's promo trailers for the second season, Idris seems to acknowledge the need for a tighter focus and greater interplay between characters. With infectious exuberance he claims that, "[In season 2], we're attacking. The pace is different, the worlds are interacting a lot more, and I think you're going to be on the edge of your seat in every single scene, every single moment."

On Thursday, Aug. 2, you can see for yourself if the product lives up to the hype, when a new episode of "Snowfall" airs on FX.