FX’s “Hoke” pilot is based on the Charles Willeford crime novels that follow troubled homicide detective Hoke Moseley.

Fred Ward played Moseley in George Armitage’s excellent 1990 adaptation of Willeford’s “Miami Blues.”

Screenwriter Scott Frank (“Get Shorty,” “Out Of Sight,” “The Lookout,” “Marley & Me,” “The Wolverine”), who wrote a 1988 episode of “The Wonder Years” and directed a 2011 episode of “Shameless,” will write and direct the pilot and serve as showrunner should the project advance to series.

Frank wrote and directed the big-screen 2014 Liam Neeson crime thriller “A Walk Among The Tombstones,” based on the novel by Lawrence Block.

Paul Giamatti, who plays the titled role in “Hoke,” recently completed a guest role as Lady Grantham’s American brother on “Downton Abbey” and won an Emmy, a Satellite Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his title performance in the 2008 HBO miniseries “John Adams.”

The busy Giamatti has no fewer than four big-screen efforts – “All Is Bright,” “Parkland,” “12 Years A Slave” and “Romeo & Juliet” – all arriving in October, with the Mary Poppins saga “Saving Mr. Banks” following in December. Next year he appears in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” “Love & Mercy” and “Madame Bovary.”