The Wire creators say there’s no way the show would be greenlit in today’s post-Game Of Thrones world
The iconic HBO series celebrates the 20th anniversary of its premiere this month
Aux News Game of Thrones
Back in 2002, former Baltimore Sun crime reporter David Simon and novelist/former Baltimore detective Ed Burns came together to make a TV drama chronicling the war-on-drugs policing they’d seen on the ground in their Maryland city. Exactly 20 years ago yesterday, the first episode of The Wire aired on HBO, initiating a five-season arc that was crowned last year in a BBC critics poll as the best series of this century.
But if they were faced with pitching the show today, both Simon and Burns agree their detailed, moody epic wouldn’t stand a chance of getting the green light.
“No, definitely not,” Burns told the New York Times when asked if he thinks The Wire would receive studio backing today. “HBO was going up the ladder at the time.”
It’s certainly easy to argue the network’s affinity for dramas, especially in the early aughts (would HBO even exist as it does today without The Sopranos?) But Burns explained that these days, in a post-Game Of Thrones world, studios just aren’t interested in telling the same kinds of niche, slow-burn stories.
“We caught that moment where networks were thinking, ‘Oh, we need a show for this group of people,’” Burns shared. “But now, it’s got to be Game Of Thrones. It’s got to be big. It’s got to be disconnected from stepping on anybody’s toes.”
Despite possible wariness over HBO’s current creative interests, Simon has a new limited series on the streamer, We Own This City, based on fellow Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton’s book of the same name (subtitle: A True Story Of Crime, Cops And Corruption). In The A.V. Club’s review of the show, Manuel Betancourt describes the series as “a gripping heir to to The Wire.”
For his own part, Burns revealed he’s seen and enjoyed a few of HBO’s other recent big-budget, star-studded limited series—but he doesn’t see them “cutting any new paths.”
“They are whodunits or these rich women bickering among themselves in a town. I don’t see anybody saying, ‘Hey, that’s a really great show,’” he said.
If he could do anything differently, Simon said he would attend more carefully to diversity in the writers room. “Why were we inattentive? Because it was so organic to what I’d covered and what Ed had policed,” Simon said. “If I had it to do over again, I would have to look at [the diversity of the creative team] in the same way that I looked at later productions.”
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I quite distinctly remember at the time how ridiculously outraged and offended so many people were that TV shows actually now expected them to watch every episode and pay a decent amount of attention. That kind of thing just wasn’t what people watched television for. Of course, it also helped that this was around the time that releasing shows on DVD became a thing, so an episode wasn’t just gone forever if you missed the original airing.
I mean, that’s the thing. You had maybe 2 chances to catch an episode, depending on how re-runs were scheduled, then it was gone forever, unless it was popular enough for syndication. Time shifting wasn’t a thing until VCRs, but early adopters just saw it as a way to see two shows that aired at the same time, not as an on demand thing. Most folks still taped over stuff once they had watched it because tapes were relatively expensive.
This is more of a sidebar, but looking back it’s weird to me how quickly “owning entire TV shows on DVD/home media” came in went–when it first became a thing, it seemed like buying shows on home media would be something that would stick around forever, but in retrospect it lasted maybe 10 years or so.
I hope we switch back to owning physical media again one day, though I’m not sure if anyone in charge of these things would want to let us, given the possibility of a consumer paying in aeternum for the ability to watch their content. There’s plenty of ways to reverse the convenience-to-cost ratio of streaming back to physical media. Maybe not fully realizable today, but certainly within ten years or so. If we have that much time. In any case, when we descend into Mad Max territory and the Internet is back to charging per minute, I’ll certainly be glad I held on to my Heroes DVDs
Yeah, I can’t argue with the business decision/economics of media companies focusing on streaming and no longer doing physical releases, but it’s a bummer for a couple of reasons:
1) Often, those boxed sets had some cool art and also functioned as collectables (especially for shows like Deadwood and Rome).
2) Although this is VERY niche, I miss commentary tracks.
3) Media companies have definetly shown a willingness to pull/alter episodes if they feel it will benefit their bottom line.
I’m curious though…what’s on the horizon that makes you think physical media might make a comeback? If all the streaming services end up bundled into packages?
There’s nothing specifically on the horizon, but I think storage space technology has improved greatly over a short time, eclipsed only by an even greater improvement in network capabilities. Right now that imbalance means it’s easier to stream shows over the network rather than switch out discs every few episodes. But if you could buy an SD card with all of The Wire on it, it would close the gap considerably. If something existed that would scan such a small object in the vicinity of your media room and not even require it to be put it in a device to play it, it would be even more convenient. Data storage is already incredibly cheap, we’re only one or two major advances before it could be effectively free. It feels conceivable that such a thing could exist in a relatively short amount of time.
Dude I used to LOVE commentary tracks. I used to watch Futurama’s first 4 seasons on DVD, then repeat with commentary like once a year.My brothers and I will quote commentary tracks. Like the time someone mentioned meeting Anthony Michael Hall and everyone else starts singing “Nobody cares!” to Beethoven’s 5th.(Edit) found it:
I would hate to own Heroes DVDs because it means there’s a chance I might accidentally watch Heroes.
I just bought The Good Place on Blu-Ray. Physical media still exists, for the moment.
You write as if executives are conspiring to keep you from owning TV shows in physical media. You can still buy DVDs, like right this second. I just checked on Amazon, and easily found DVDs of Succession, The Crown, Mare of Easttown, etc. You’re not in any way barred from buying these things. You just aren’t buying them, for the same reason most people aren’t — streaming is more convenient and a better value.
As soon as We Own this City come out on physical disk I am getting It. I get your point but I don’t want to run the risk of 2 to 3 years from now HBO Max change their stuff up. I need this show in my collection.
And if that makes sense for you, that’s great. Enjoy! I was objecting to Yellowfoot’s statement that he or she “hope[s] we switch back to owning physical media again one day, though I’m not sure if anyone in charge of these things would want to let us.” Any consumer can switch back to owning physical media right now. They’re “letting us” right now. The thing stopping people from buying DVDs isn’t some corporate conspiracy, but the fact that most of us don’t want to do that.
I’m saying that streaming is more convenient and a better value and content managers have an incentive to keep it that way in the future for their own profit. It’s not a conspiracy any more than any of capitalism is a conspiracy. My main reason for not purchasing physical media these days is that media collections take up an inordinate amount of space, but that’s a solvable problem that will very likely never be solved, because streaming has already solved it while introducing other problems that will probably never be solved.
I don’t think capitalism caused the issue that physical things take up space. Take it up with the concept of mass.
I think what’s happening- at least psychologically for the consumer- is that we’re not seeing these things in stores on shelves, which gives the perception that physical media is fading. (The Movie/TV section at my nearest Best Buy certainly seems to be shrinking by the year.)
I think you have the cause and effect backwards. Best Buy would be thrilled to keep selling you DVDs — they don’t get any money off your HBO Max subscription. It’s not that the consumer isn’t buying DVDs because they’re less visible at Best Buy — they’re less visible at Best Buy because stores don’t stock things consumers don’t buy.
I still do it. It’s getting hard though because some shows just aren’t getting physical media releases anymore. Which is a real shame considering our internet infrastructure still stinks.
DVD sets were VASTLY overpriced. It would be like 20 bucks per quarter season of the simpsons in about 2004. That is nuts to buy the series.
I still feel motivated to buy DVDs for things I really like, especially movies since those can get shuffled around services pretty often, but for TV shows it does feel a lot more convenient to just pull it up on streaming than break out the DVDs. I got the box set for Parks and Rec a while back because there was a deal on Amazon or something but I’ve barely used them since.
It’s definetly way more convenient, especially since (for me at least) I’m far less likely to rewatch a TV show than I am a movie. And living in an apartment, there’s only so much space I’m willing to set aside for the super deluxe boxed set of Arli$$ or whatever. I suppose a compromise would be to buy episodes/seasons of shows on Amazon or iTunes and download them, but my understanding is that you don’t “own” those episodes any more than you would streaming them.
I might be going back to it with the way streaming is going. I’m glad I still have a lot of my old DVD collections. I started rewatching BSG on DVD because I don’t want to subscribe to whatever streaming platform has that now (Peacock?).Plus some series just pull politically incorrect episodes now. You can’t watch the Community D&D episode on streaming anymore because a character puts on makeup to look like a drow (admittedly their is a blackface joke made). Okay, yeah, maybe that type of thing shouldn’t be made anymore (or ever), but that means you can’t watch the entire episode now?
To be honest, the Golden Age of TV is great and all, but I’m a little annoyed that everything is a super special limited event cinematic drama masterpiece these days. I know there’s still plenty dross out there too, but I miss something like the humble basic cable light drama—your Leverages, your Burn Notices, your Eurekas—which doesn’t take itself too seriously and rewards multiple levels of engagement. Something that’s clearly very lovingly crafted but implicitly tells you “you know what, it’s okay if you want to just have this on in the background while folding laundry or doing your taxes.”
“I’m a little annoyed that everything is a super special limited event cinematic drama masterpiece these days.”
I wish I could be so self-involved that I’m annoyed by something I made up.
Yes to this, but also on the subject of Burn Notice, how about just anybody put Gabrielle Anwar back on my TV for anything, please.
I’m a little annoyed that everything is a super special limited event cinematic drama masterpiece these days. I have a similar problem, but it’s more that I think studios have found a way to ape the aesthetic of Prestige TV, resulting in a deluge of shows that look good and superficially appear deep but just aren’t.
Omg this! All day
I’m a Castle fan for that reason
Burn Notice, the show that inspired the SNL game show sketch, “What is Burn Notice?”.
Yup it’s the TV equivalent of the death of the mid budget movie. Everything’s prestige or trash, with very limited selections in between.
I agree, I am not a fan of 8-10 episodes then wait for 1-3 years for the next season. I kind of miss the every fall a new season. a new episode for 20 some weeks, summer reruns and repeat the next fall.
I love those kinds of shows too, and it makes me feel like the Golden Age of TV might be over tbh (but that’s a pretty unpopular opinion, I’ll admit)
Damn, I loved Leverage and Burn Notice (I didn’t get to Eureka, so I’ll substitute Psych). I kinda miss shows that were full of character and wit, but also didn’t feel like the weight of the world was on it. Now it’s either Something To Say (even a show like The Boys is supremely heavy handed), or so frothy as to be completely empty (think Emily In Paris)
Yeah, The Wire was a show you definitely had to pay attention to. If you were only half watching it while you are also on your phone, you’re going to be lost. Reading comprehension is a thing and so is viewing comprehension. I’m always amazed when talking to some of my friends about a show or movie and they would complain about something “not making sense” and I would point out a plot point that explained it all and then they’d get annoyed and say something like, “well I guess I missed that part”…maybe if they put their fucking phone down for an hour.
I always tell people before starting The Wire that it will take at least 3 episodes to lock into the show. I think that is a lot to ask from an audience these days. The weird thing with a lot of the people I know who gave The Wire a chance is they all got locked into the show during the same scene and it’s not a super dramatic one: it was the scene where they are trying to move a couch of all things. I don’t know what it was about that scene that clicked with so many people I know. Maybe the metaphor worked so well subconsciously and by that time people could keep track of all those characters by then.
Why are you going and dissing Snot Boogie like that?
I meant no disrespect to West Baltimore’s illustrative and prolific craps player.
This is America. You gotta let him play.
I’m always amazed when talking to some of my friends about a show or movie and they would complain about something “not making sense”
and I would point out a plot point that explained it all and then
they’d get annoyed and say something like, “well I guess I missed that
part”Chris Nolan movies are the ultimate example of this. People always used to talk about how ‘confusing’ his movies were but, like, dude… there are always multiple characters delivering exposition to make sure the audience knows exactly what’s going on. There’s nothing confusing or ambiguous about any of them.I’m convinced he’s single-handedly responsible for the entire ‘Movie Explainer’ YouTube genre.
Especially when Inception has a whole long conversation explaining the team’s predicament and the threat of limbo, and then Tom Hardy pointlessly sums it up in a couple lines because Nolan knew full well some people would complain that they couldn’t understand it.
If only Hardy’s character had summed up anyone’s character motivation.Inception is style over substance trash. As are a great deal of Nolan’s supposed “masterpieces”.I’m not a fan, if that wasn’t clear.
Yes, which is why the dialogue in most of his films is shit. I want to see a career retrospective on Nolan hosted by Michael York as Basil Exposition.
it was the scene where they are trying to move a couch
Well I guess I missed that part…
Did anyone catch the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds? It was your classic “hijinks” episode where the characters run around the ship facing silly problems that you know will certainly be resolved by the end of the episode. And it was so much fun!
ST:SNW has been committed to the episodic format generally, but this episode especially felt like the kind of filler you’d see all the time in the 90’s but you almost never see on modern series. I think when showrunners had to put out 24 episodes on microbudgets, they needed a few stories with only the salaried cast, on sets they already owned, and where nothing super important happened because it wouldn’t air during sweeps months.
Now, of course, those constraints are gone. If a showrunner wants every episode to have a big budget advance the larger story (and it seems most of them do), they can do just that.
As a kid, I thought this new serialized landscape was exactly what I wanted. Why waste time on Wesley Crusher being sentenced to death for breaking an alien greenhouse when we could be checking up on the Borg? Mulder and Scully chasing a fluke monster through the sewers is cool, but can’t we get back to the big alien invasion / conspiracy story soon?
Now I see that the smaller, sillier episodes are what made these series really sing. This last episode of Strange New Worlds, while doing very little of importance story-wise, made the sets, characters, and relationships feel lived-in and real. When they inevitably do face some big landscape-altering challenge in the season finale, I’m going to care more after laughing with them through an absurd Freaky Friday scenario in episode five.
Ehat’s funny, and fantastic about The Wire… it all came later. At the time Six Feet Under was waaaaaaay more ground breaking. Omar wasn’t nearly as revolutionary as anything on SFU
I get that being controversial is a thing. “Kids these days, they’d never be able to make Blazing Saddles today.” Hey edgy, cutting edge. Mmm mmm good.HBO has awesome programs. A ton. A shit ton. A fuckwad. But they also have a shit load of garbage. Just trash shows with multiple seasons.They’d definitely green light The Wire today. That and then 5 other shows that no one remembers cause they’re so awful.
Was Simon suggesting that the show would not be greenlit because it stepped on toes, i.e. would be perceived as racist or derogatory? Because that’s the vibe I got.
It got a ton of complaints about Levy being an offensive Jewish stereotype, despite Simon being Jewish himself.
I mean those things are in no way contradictory.
I don’t know, man. I don’t read these articles.Like none of us do, right? We read headlines, jump to the comments and then make asses out of ourselves.
I believe what he’s saying is that Baltimore does not have enough dragons to be appealing to today’s audiences.
It’s true. That’s what really dragged down the last few seasons of True Detective, imo…no dragons.
that and whatever the hell Vince Vaughan was doing.
He could’ve given the same performance, but put him astride, leading, or in front of a dragon and it’d not only be more compelling, it would make more sense.
I’ll also say, as an aside, that the last scene of We Own This City would’ve been greatly improved by the addition of a marauding dragon.
Speak for yourself, Buster!I for one provide nothing but the finest hot takes on Reddit about Game of Thrones, a show I have never seen.
I think there’s shades of that with his comment about stepping on people’s toes, but I think the larger part is that he thinks HBO (or other media conglomerates) doesn’t want any part of a show that only has a niche appeal and is planned for multiple seasons. The same way Amazon is spending billions of dollars trying to build two different fantasy empires, the streaming giants are all focused on how to make money, and not how to make great television.
And of course, that was always the case, but I think that the age of “Prestige TV” was ushered in mostly by HBO and a few other channels floundering a bit for a want of content and accidentally giving creatives the power to make cool shit instead of just maximizing profit. And when that cool shit turned out to incidentally maximize their profit, they followed their normal pattern of jamming that same button over and over again while everyone else tried to copy their formula with various levels of success.All that to say that I don’t know for sure if HBO would greenlight The Wire today, but Netflix absolutely would, and then cancel it immediately after one season.
Honestly, I’d think the bigger issue would be portraying corrupt and violent cops sympathetically.
One thing about The Wire that still gets at me is the early scene where Bodey knocks over one of the placeholder cops and everyone nearby immediately starts kicking his ass. Cut to Kima who curses and hauls ass across the Pit in a way that looks like she’s going to try to stop it, but she just immediately lays into him too. It’s a real credit to the writing that you can end up rooting for most of those characters by the end anyway. They even have you rooting for them kicking the shit out of Bird. Police departments ought to just hire David Simon to write more shows to soften their image in the media.
David Simon doesn’t say any of the stuff Burns says. He doesn’t try to correct or disagree with him but his whole take after that question is more about how his writers room wasn’t as diverse at it would be nowadays.
It’s bizarre, almost like he’s answering a completely different question.
Dream on from Cincinnati never got a chance!
I was watching a bad movie review on YouTube of I Come in Peace and I totally forgot that Brian Benben was kind of a big deal for a few years.Honestly a little surprised they haven’t tried to sequel/reboot Dream On.ETA: This is a very niche comment, but if they were going to do another Dream On, they should cast Roderick Strong, who I always thought looked a bit like Benben.
Ehhh, I mean it’s pretty ballsy of me to say I know more about HBO’s process for developing shows than Burns, but even just recently the network was greenlighing (and renewing!) The White Lotus from Mike White, which is pretty damn niche and about as far from GoT as you can get.
I haven’t seen AV covering We Own This City, but it’s good. It feels like The Wire season 6, with a surprising amount of The Wire cast back in different roles, like Marlo (Jamie Hector) as a cop.And worth it to hear Jon Bernthal doing a Baltimore accent and saying “ambalance”.
They did a pre-air but not episodic coverage. That seems to be the standard nowadays (probably upper management directed). They don’t cover much of anything weekly. South Park released another special and they didn’t even cover that.
The South Park special wasn’t worth covering.
Not enough eyeballs to justify paying for pre-air reviews of a lot of shows, let alone ongoing coverage of anything but the absolute most popular shows to read about online.All in the game – but the game done changed.
I watched the whole thing, and thought it was fine, but disappointing. The non-linear structure seemed designed to cover up the fact that we basically see the same stuff over and over again — a viewer can be trusted to know that Bernthal was stealing money the second or third time we saw him put it in his bulletproof vest. Wumni Mosaku’s role was basically to announce to the audience, in the most didactic terms possible, what the lesson of the show was, and then she had conversations with Treat Williams, who was like that, but even worse.I agree with you, however, that Bernthal did a great job.
I liked it an awful lot, though I agree the non-linear structure didn’t do it any favors. The repetition is one thing, but it also made the basic narrative unnecessarily difficult to piece together, and a lot of the story depended on who knew what when. (Linear flashbacks would have been ideal, I think.) And the consent decree plotline all but had Keenen Ivory Wayans in a mailman’s outfit saying ‘Message!’ But it was great seeing Simon in Baltimore again, and Bernthal held everything together brilliantly.
Bernthal needs his own website for all his different show’s hair-styles.
Unflattering White Trashy Hairstyles: A Compendium
I tried to get into We Own This City but it just came off to me like The Wire with less interesting characters
He’s not wrong. Hell, even back in the day when HBO loved it they canceled it multiple times.In fact, I would say that it likely is what it is because of DVD sales.
I love David Simon (I’ve watched Treme, twice!), but that is some nonsense.
In fairness, it was Ed Burns who said this. Not David Simon.
Ahh. Thank you.
I mean….2002?!??! 20 years ago. There is a fine line between what the Sopranos did, what happened to Deadwood and Six Feet Under.Sopranos was successful, it pulled on the gangster alpha male crap. Wildly successful, and HBO pushed that. Yet…. Six Feet was probably, actually, the best family drama ever made, and Deadwood… I will die on a hill, Deadwood is the best “words” written on Television ever. HBO had three aces, they threw away two and made a lot of praise and money on one.SfU is still the best family drama, EVER. Deadwood is still the best T.V. Western, EVER. The Wire is and was the best police show ever, Homicide Life on the Street is up there too… but OZ made it all happen… If you can’t push societal norms, you can’t make great, transitional content.
I love that HBO’s reputation was built by three guys named David: Chase, Simon, and Milch.
Don’t forget Larry!
I would add The Larry Sander’s Show to the list as the best work place sitcom ever, yes, including The Office and Park and Rec.
Yes… absolutely.
Reading the interview, it’s hard for me to understand whether he means it wouldn’t have been picked up for a multi-season series. He’s gotten some fairly esoteric limited stuff picked up (even The Deuce went 3 seasons) in the post-GOT years.
But he’s grandfathered in. If he were a nobody and pitched The Wire today, would HBO run it?
The wire Pilot has an amazing script so i think there is still a chance. It’s hard to say with HBO trading corporate overlords every couple years, but most things on HBO are still high quality even if not all of it is suited for my tastes.
Who knows? True Detective, Girls, Insecure, and Somebody Somewhere all premiered after Game of Thrones, with creators that relatively few people would have been familiar with. For what it’s worth, Simon also had done The Corner for HBO by the time HBO aired The Wire.
True Detective is an interesting one, to the extent that I wonder if The Wire would have been shoehorned into that. Girls and Insecure are definitely ‘rich women bickering’, I haven’t seen Somebody Somewhere.
My guess is that he’s more referring to the “Big Little Lies/The Undoing” brand of miniseries by that description. Who knows, but I feel like everyone who hasn’t seen Girls thinks that the characters are all millionaires’ kids based on Gawker recaps or something.
But they are all millionaires’ kids on Girls
I think Lena Dunham’s character’s parents were professors—that’s why they cut her off financially at the beginning.Besides, the quote “rich women bickering among themselves in a town” seems pretty clearly not aimed at shows like Girls and Insecure.
They made Mare of Easttown, which went over well.
He was grandfathered in then too though – David Simon had already had a big success with Homicide: Life on the Street. He wasn’t a nobody.
If this is a joke, I very much get it. Well done.
This seems like a puzzling argument about a network that was airing, literally last week, a six-episode series from Simon about policing in Baltimore, starring a number of The Wire’s original cast members. Last year HBO aired Mare of Easttown, a slow-burn, crime series set in a different gritty northeastern setting. And there are plenty of recent examples of series that are not big or Game of Thrones-y on HBO: Divorce, The Staircase, Big Little Lies, Landscapers, Gentleman Jack, Sharp Objects.
In fairness, most of those are ‘whodunits or these rich women bickering among themselves in a town.’ And I don’t think We Own This City gets aired without Simon getting the lifetime HBO pass from The Wire.
They are shows that are far more like The Wire than the are like Game of Thrones. It seems silly to say that HBO would never greenlight The Wire today, because there is no show right now airing that is really, really similar to The Wire, except for the one show airing right now that is really, really similar to The Wire, because that one doesn’t count.
Well, it doesn’t count because it’s made by the same guy who made The Wire, and that’s the prime reason HBO aired it. How many non-puzzlebox/whodunnit series about lower- and middle-class urban criminals and/or professionals done by anyone other than David Simon has HBO aired in the past five-ten years? Chernobyl might be the closest, but even that’s starting to look like the end of an era.
So wait, tell me again what extremely narrow category you’re looking for to qualify as a show that’s like The Wire?Succession is also a non-puzzlebox and non-whodunnit series about professionals, not done by David Simon.
Jesus Christ!Te creator of The Wire – who still gets things on HBO *because of The Wire* is saying that The Wire wouldn’t get on TV today, and your response is that’s wrong because the creator of The Wire has a new show on HBO?Stop eating all of the idiot sandwiches please.
“but even that’s starting to look like the end of an era.”Yes but that has nothing to do with Game of Thrones and more about new owners Discovery being a bunch of lowest-common-denominator easy money dipshits.
Not a lot of people can say they saw The Wire at 9 PM on June 2, 2002, but I can. I was in a hotel room with my parents on our way to my summer orientation session at college, my mom said “Hey, we’ve got HBO! Let’s see what’s on.” She flipped the channel, we came in on that scene with Kima, Herc and Carver cussing up a storm about why they still don’t have computers/“Shit rolls downhill; piss trickles,” and then she promptly flipped it back.
This is just plain dumb. There are lots and lots and lots of shows on right now that are not Game of Thrones level spectacles. Most of the shows on right now would fit in that category, really.
Most shows on tv are small, crime dramas that ask difficult questions about modern day policing and race relations, eh?
Yeah, it sounds like he’s only using the biggest, most talked about/mainstream stuff for comparison? It’s like complaining about music these days but all you listen to is Top 40 radio. There’s been plenty of stuff on HBO that is cutting new ground. Also the dig at shows about “rich women bickering around town” comes off especially bitchy. It’s not what I’m interested in watching either but it sounds like the TV drama equivalent of, “ugh, chick flicks.”
Somebody anybody please put Homicide on a streaming service FFS!
If I ever watch The Wire did they fix the aspect ratio for the HD versions, cuz I remember there was grumbling about that a few years ago I believe.
It could be made today, it just would have name actors in it, likely being a vehicle for actors to get awards. Like McNulty would have to be an established name actor, Dominic West was still establishing himself in 2002 when The Wire first premiered. A couple of other roles would end up being name actors, instead of character actors from NY television and theater scene.
I disagree. The Wire would exist but it would be set in South Side Chicago.
Sorry Baltimore, your murder rate infamy plunged post Bush presidency.
that’s wendell pierce on the left. whatever, tho.
They’re named from right to left, for God knows what reason.
The names are in the wrong order in the caption under the photo, dudes.
No mention of Simon’s other Baltimore crime series, Homicide: Life on the Street? It predated The Wire by nearly 10 years.