If you are looking for an addictive drama in which hats are practically main characters, then you need go no further than HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire.”

The main story centers around Atlantic City and the start of prohibition, the brief decade in which the United States made a Constitutional amendment banning the production, importation, distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages. County Treasurer Enoch “Nucky” Thompson (Steve Buscemi) is the political boss in charge of the city and county, while

This is a Biltmore Imperial homburg in the color willow, which is similar to the homburg worn by Steve Buscemi in "Boardwalk Empire."

also controlling all of the bootlegging and liquor smuggling in the region. He establishes Atlantic City as one of the biggest ports for importing booze and distributing it to the mob in Chicago and New York.

Nucky juggles the steady stream of mobsters, politicians, gamblers and prostitutes in this captivating show loaded with political intrigue.

Season 1 is set in 1920, and it is great to see the period clothes with the men primarily in 3-button suits and women in gowns and flapper dresses. The clothes capture all of the color the old photos can never convey. Oh, and I think I mentioned something about hats.

Every man and most women in the show have hats. Not only do they have hats, they have discussions about hats.

There is a great discussion in a synagogue in the first season where Al Capone (Stephen Graham), a young man and hired muscle to Chicago’s mob kingpin Johnny Torrio (Greg Antonacci), is at a colleague’s son’s bar mitzvah. An older Jewish man is explaining the significance of a bar mitzvah initiating a boy into manhood and his acceptance of religious responsibility. The discussion drifts into hats and the older man explains how Capone is still wearing a cap (a brown tweed newsboy) and how it is a cap of a child. There is an inferance that Capone must take on more responsibility. The next time we see Capone he is no longer clowning around like a kid with the guys and is wearing a fedora. (Click here for a similar grey fedora.)

There’s another scene in the first season where a government agent is trying to teach a new hire how to identify a gathering of mob bosses and political bosses by the hats they are wearing. The new agent gets totally confused by the hats, clothes and men in a scene that is dryly comical.

Nucky Thompson is a homburg man, and he seems to own about a dozen different colors of homburgs throughout the show. The homburg offers more of a status of power and wealth. Nucky’s most frequently worn homburg is very much like our Biltmore Imperial in the color “willow.” Yet, Hats Plus has many colors of Biltmore homburgs and Capas “Godfathers.”

Enjoy the show, and enjoy the hats.