The Wire turns 20

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https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-f...rsary-1361361/

Simon's The Wire, which he developed with former Baltimore homicide detective Ed Burns, kicked off its five-season run on June 2, 2002. The Wire, says Alan Sepinwall, "was at first glance a cops-versus-crooks saga in which McNulty joined a Baltimore Police Department task force to bring down the organization of local kingpin Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris). But that pursuit of Barksdale — and, in later seasons, his calculating former lieutenant Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) and then the enigmatic Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) — was really just the narrative carrot Simon and Burns used to pull viewers through a series of complex arguments about the moral failings of the War on Drugs, the reasons for the crumbling state of cities like Baltimore, and larger flaws in the foundation of America as a whole. It was, in other words, a lot to follow. As a result, The Wire was never a breakout hit in the halcyon days of 'It’s not TV. It’s HBO.' Ratings were modest and the Emmys barely noticed it (two nominations and zero wins over five seasons). Yet The Wire in death turned out to be far more powerful and influential than it ever had been in life — the TV equivalent of the old line about how the Velvet Underground didn’t sell many records, but everybody who bought one was inspired to start their own band." Sepinwall adds: "But The Wire has proven far more challenging to reverse-engineer than it would seem, given how many other series try incorporating one or more of its various narrative and stylistic signatures. Even the shows Simon and collaborators like Burns and George Pelecanos have made in the 14 years since The Wire series finale — including the just-completed We Own This City, a sort of spiritual sequel to The Wire (or, perhaps, a rebuttal) — haven’t quite gotten all their elements in as perfect harmony as The Wire achieved throughout its run. But at least We Own This City or The Deuce were produced by people who were there when the original recipe was being crafted, while so many recent dramas feel as if they were made by someone who tasted the original’s ingredients and then had to guess at the proper quantities and use of each. Too often these days, I find myself shaking my head at some new show and muttering, 'If you are not David Simon — or at least someone who worked for years with David Simon — then you really should not be attempting this right now.'"

ALSO:

• To appreciate what The Wire was, you first have to consider what it wasn’t: "It was nothing like the half-century of police shows that came before it," says James Poniewozik. "Structurally, it didn’t offer a neatly solved case of the week; informed by the police experience of Simon’s collaborator Ed Burns, it was realistic and meticulously messy. Philosophically, it wasn’t convinced that it made much difference, in the grand scheme, if its cases got solved at all. But it also wasn’t like cable dramas, such as The Sopranos, that were built around charismatic antiheroes whose exploits captivated the viewer and drove the plot. Oh, it had characters — dozens of lively creations, crackling with life and profane poetry. (In one tour de force sequence, two detectives scour a murder scene, speaking no dialogue except variations on the English language’s most versatile obscenity.) But whatever triumphs they had or bold choices they made, in the end their outcomes were fated by the systems they worked within. It wasn’t really a cop show — or rather, it used that genre as a crowbar to jimmy open doors other cop shows didn’t enter: labor, education, media criticism. It was its era’s richest show about civic politics, while being set only part-time at City Hall. It was a savvy and layered legal drama. At times — as when the shotgun-toting Omar teamed with the hired gun Brother Mouzone (Michael Potts) for vengeance on the drug lord Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) — it was one of TV’s finest westerns."
• David Simon and Ed Burns agree The Wire would be rejected if pitched today: "No, definitely not. HBO was going up the ladder at the time," says Burns. "They didn’t understand The Wire until the fourth season. In fact, they were thinking about canceling it after three. We caught that moment where networks were thinking, 'Oh, we need a show for this group of people.' 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. I’ve watched a couple of the limited series on HBO, and they’re good shows, but they’re not cutting 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.'" Simon adds: "No, because we didn’t attend, in any real way, to the idea of diversity in the writers’ room. I tried to get Dave Mills, who had been my friend since college, to work on The Wire. But that would have been organic. It was just a friend; it wasn’t even about Black and white. But other than David, who did a couple scripts for us, and Kia Corthron, the playwright, did one, we were really inattentive to diversity. That wasn’t forward thinking."
• Andre Royo, Sonja Sohn, Tray Chaney and other Wire actors look back on what the show meant to them
• Read an oral history of Season 1's "Game Day"
• The Wire ignited many careers, from Michael B. Jordan to Idris Elba to the late Michael K. Williams
• The Wire remains a cultural phenomenon in Baltimore
• Listen to the first episode of The Wire at 20 Podcast hosted by Method Man with guest David Simon