By Stephen Battaglio

Los Angeles Times

(TNS)

If you think the 2016 race for the White House is a circus worthy of a reality TV program, Showtime is right there with you.

The premium cable network announced Tuesday that it is launching a weekly documentary-style series called “The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth,” which will go behind the scenes of the campaign. The series will be produced by Left/Right, a company that specializes in unscripted TV shows.

According to a statement from Showtime, “‘The Circus’ will follow multiple individual stories and key characters from the campaigns and capture their unique perspectives in weekly half-hour shows between January and November.”

Bloomberg Politics managing editors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann will be involved in the production, along with campaign strategist and media adviser Mark McKinnon. Halperin and Heilemann are the anchors of the daily Bloomberg Television program “With All Due Respect,” which will soon get a second airing on MSNBC.

“Americans are captivated by the 2016 presidential election and a real-time political series of this nature has never been done before,” Showtime Networks President David Nevins said in a statement. “People don’t want to wait a year to see how and why things played out and the impact they had. Everything today is immediate, so there’s no better time to change the way American politics are covered.”

“The Circus” will premiere in January in advance of the Iowa caucuses.

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