It’s been more than a year since the finale of The Wire, and I don’t know about you, but I’m missing the hell out of it. Consequently, I was very excited to see the Freakonomics Blog report that writer/creator David Simon is planning to shoot a pilot for HBO about New Orleans. Simon’s a native Baltimoron, so it’s unlikely he’ll be able to capture the spirit of another city quite so well, but I could still see him doing a bang-up job.
In the meantime, I’ve got a few suggestions to help you get your Wire fix:
1. Homicide: Life on the Street– Simon created but mostly did not write the critically-acclaimed NBC series. It’s a far more traditional crime drama than The Wire, but especially in it’s early seasons it epitomizes the best possibilities of the genre to explore psychology, philosophy, and sociology. Homicide‘s fantastic cast includes several faces that will be familiar from The Wire. Clayton LeBouef who plays strip club owner and wannabe drug dealer Orlando on The Wire but villainous police Colonel Barnfather on Homicide. McNulty’s ex-wife, played by Callie Thorne, appears as one of the lead detectives in Homicide’s later seasons. Most significantly, Clark Johnson, one of Homicide‘s stars from the very beginning, appears in season 5 of The Wire as Sun paper editor Gus Haynes. Also be on the lookout for guest appearances by Robin Williams, Chris Rock, John Waters, and many more!
2. Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets– The book that started it all. Sun reporter David Simon spent a year with the Baltimore Police Department’s homicide unit, ultimately producing a gripping and fascinating account of their work and the people who do it. Don’t be intimidated: it’s a long book but a quick read, and quite different from the Homicide series it spawned, though its influence on both that series and The Wire is clear. Wire fans will particularly enjoy getting to meet the real Jay Landsman, who actually did appear on the show in the guise of Western district Lieutenant Dennis Mello.
3. Clockers– The influence of this 1993 novel by The Wire co-writer Richard Price on the series is clear, as several popular scenes (including one of my personal favorites, when Herc asks where the kids buy the hats with the brims turned to the side) are lifted whole cloth from Price’s book. Clockers is fundamentally a character study of a young New Jersey drug dealer and the homicide detective investigating him. Price is an acclaimed and accomplished novelist- frankly, recruiting him to write for TV was a tremendous coup for Simon- with a sensitive eye for the complexitities of the urban drug trade and the humanity of those affected by it. I haven’t seen the Spike Lee film or read anything else by Price (though I just got Lush Life from the library), but I imagine they are good as well.
4. The Corner– This HBO miniseries is a very clear predecessor to The Wire. It follows a single family, based on the one Simon followed for his book of the same name, battling with drug addiction and poverty in their Baltimore neighborhood. Be warned: it’s a far darker series than The Wire, which does a brilliant job of finding humor and levity in a fundamentally tragic narrative. One might even call it crushingly depressing, though there is a little unintentional humor in seeing Lance “Lieutenant Daniels” Reddick as a drug addict and Clarke “Lester Freamon” Peters as a drug dealer (and addict). I haven’t read the book, but I’m sure it’s good too.
5. Generation Kill– This is the only thing that makes me skeptical about a new miniseries. I was really excited to see David Simon’s take on Iraq (the first war, mind you), but I found this miniseries to have a rambling, convoluted plot, bland, indistinguishable characters, and surprisingly little deviation from themes already well-explored in The Wire. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad series by any means, but I didn’t think it was up to the standards set by Simon’s other work. Once again, he reminds us that perverse incentives for institutional middle managers lead to inefficient and counterproductive missions for those at the bottom and on the ground.
One last, humorously troubling note. I was recommending The Wire to a friend who recently discovered The Sopranos. I told her that The Wire was overall a less violent show, but that it was maybe more disturbing because it was more realistic. She, a resident of Baltimore County, reassured me, “Oh, I don’t think that will bother me. I don’t get into that part of the city much anyway.”
The Wire is the absolute stone cold nuts of TV shows. You can also check out the books of George Pelecanos, who wrote many of the best Wire episodes. These books are set in DC instead of Baltimore but have a lot of the same flavor.
-bruechips