Chris Evans to Make TV Return with Apple’s Defending Jacob

Chris Evans will be returning to TV for first time in nearly two decades, as the Captain America and Avengers star is set to star in and executive produce Apple’s Defending Jacob, based on the bestselling 2012 William Landay novel, per THR.

This is Evans’ first regular TV role since Fox’s Opposite Sex, which ran for one season in 2000, kick-starting his career and marking his only role as a series regular to date. Perhaps best known for his role as Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Evans has stated that will be hanging up his shield as the patriot superhero next year, in the as-yet-untitled follow-up to Avengers: Infinity War. Evans also recently appeared on Broadway in a revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero opposite Michael Cera, and is set to begin production on the feature film The Devil All The Time, due out in 2020.

Defending Jacob is a character-driven crime drama following Andy Barber, an assistant district attorney investigating the killing of a 14-year-old boy who learns his teenage son is a suspect.

Planet of the Apes trilogy writer Mark Bomback will write, executive produce and serve as showrunner. The show comes from Paramount Television and Anonymous Content, with Rosalie Swedlin and Adam Shulman executive producing for Anonymous Content, while Oscar-nominated The Imitation Game director Morten Tyldum will executive produce and direct.

Getting the former Captain America star onboard for his first post-Marvel TV role is part of Apple’s big push into the original content space. The tech giant has made myriad series orders with major names attached, including M. Night Shyamalan, Damien Chazelle, Reese Witherspoon and Octavia Spencer, and J.J. Abrams, just to name a few. Like those projects, Defending Jacob is going straight-to-series for an eight-episode limited series run.

No word yet on when (or how) we should expect Apple to put out Defending Jacob, or for that matter, any of the other series it’s ordered so far, but Captain America fans can expect to take one good last look at Chris Evans as Cap when the Infinity War follow-up premieres next May.