Is 'American Rust' a Limited Series? Details on the Showtime Show

The Showtime series American Rust is about a struggling town in America's Rust Belt. Set in the early 2000s in a fictional town called Buell in Pennsylvania, the show follows the town's chief of police. He, along with the other residents, live in an area of the U.S. that once used to have tons of manufacturing jobs but is now depressed. Since those jobs are no longer around, those factories have been abandoned, and many in that area find themselves out of work and struggling to make ends meet.

The series is based on a book of the same name. And now, fans want to know if American Rust is a limited series. Plenty of other shows that are also based on books go beyond the scope of the book to expand the world for multiple seasons. But is that the plan for American Rust? Here's what we know.

According to The Boston Globe, American Rust is an eight-part mini-series based on the novel of the same name by Philipp Meyer. Over the course of the show, we meet Del Harris (Jeff Daniels) the chief of police in Buell, who has to figure out what exactly he's going to do when the son of a woman he's in love with is accused of murder.

Del is in love with a woman named Grace (Maura Tierney), and she has a son named Billy (Alex Neustaedter). Billy is accused of killing someone in an abandoned mill. But because of the nature of the small town, Del knows how much Grace is already struggling. Having her son be accused of murder isn't going to help, and Del needs to figure out what he's going to do.

Jeff says he understands the kind of person Del is because he grew up in a small town in Michigan. "I worked at my father's lumber company," he said in an interview with Showtime. "I worked with these people that work in steel mills." He goes on to talk about there being a lot of good people living out in "a world full of wrong" and says that Del Harris is one of those people.

Life is already hard for Del including the other residents of Buell. Because of the collapse of the manufacturing industry in America, people in the Rust Belt are doing whatever they can to survive, and that means that not everyone is making the best choices. Jeff understands this about Del very well considering they have similar backgrounds.

"He's a good person, he has dignity, and he has to make a bunch of bad choices to survive," Jeff said. In her own interview with Showtime, Maura basically said the same thing about Grace. Everyone's experiencing hardships but they're all good people in their own way.

You can watch the full series of American Rust on Showtime now and through other platforms like Hulu and Amazon Prime via premium subscriptions. You can watch the first episode on YouTube for free.