Ask any TV fan what the best shows are, The Wire inevitably ranks near the top of the list. Whether you ask about dramas, thrillers, cop shows, or just all-around solid acting, The Wire has it all. While it was announced that two of the creative powerhouses behind that HBO series, George Pelacanos and David Simon, would be reuniting for a new series set in Baltimore, it has taken some time before the official word was released about the new project.
According to Deadline, Simon and Pelecanos will be adapting the non-fiction book We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption by investigative journalist Justin Fenton as a limited series for HBO. While the drama is set in Baltimore, it will not be connected to The Wire. Still, we can anticipate that there may be some connective tissue between that series and the pair's recent HBO project, The Deuce, in the form of writing and directing talent with the potential for stars from the ensembles of both shows to join the cast of this new series.
Per Deadline, We Own the City is set in Baltimore 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Drug and violent crime are surging, and the city is reaching its highest murder count in more than two decades: 342 homicides in a single year, in a city of just 600,000 people. Facing pressure from the mayor’s office—as well as a federal investigation of the department over Gray’s death—Baltimore police commanders turn to a rank-and-file hero, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and his elite plainclothes unit, the Gun Trace Task Force, to help get guns and drugs off the street.
However, behind these new efforts, a criminal conspiracy of an unprecedented scale was unfolding within the police department. Entrusted with fixing the city’s drug and gun crisis, Jenkins chose to exploit it instead. With other members of the empowered Gun Trace Task Force, Jenkins stole from Baltimore’s citizens—skimming from drug busts, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes, and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Their brazen crime spree would go unchecked for years. The result was countless wrongful convictions, the death of an innocent civilian, and the mysterious death of one cop who was shot in the head, killed just a day before he was scheduled to testify against the unit.
Considering how The Wire is often hailed as one of the best television series of all time, We Own This City is bound to have people flocking to HBO to see what it's all about. If I could take this moment to make a confession… I've never seen The Wire. I know. I'm disappointed in myself as well. To make matters worse, I've owned the complete Blu-ray box set for years and have yet to crack it open. As I said, I know. I'm the worst. It's not my fault that there's so much great stuff on TV nowadays. How's this? I promise to watch it before the end of 2021. Cool?
Now that we have an accord. Let us know if you're interested to see what We Own This City is all about.