That’s reflective of actual events in post–Freddie Gray Baltimore as well as the evolution in public consideration of policing during the Black Lives Matter movement. While the previous series showed us both good police officers and ones who did not always act in the best interests of the public, the new show is explicitly an indictment of policing gone all the way off the rails. That said, We Own This City differs from The Wire in both intention and execution. These casting choices underline certain realities conveyed elsewhere in the series: Guys who look like Williams or Lombardozzi will always hold positions of power, and the line separating cop behavior from criminal behavior has dissolved almost entirely. Several of the actors who once played drug dealers - Jamie Hector, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Tray Chaney, and Jermaine Crawford, among others - are now portraying cops, while Delaney Williams (Sergeant Jay Landsman in The Wire) takes on the role of actual onetime Baltimore police commissioner Kevin Davis, and Domenick Lombardozzi (formerly Herc, a sergeant in the Major Crimes Division) is the head of the police union. Numerous actors from that seminal drama, which aired from 2002 to 2008, appear in roles that feel extra meaningful in light of the parts they carried before. Given its interest in Baltimore policing, there are multiple scenes - of cops and feds listening in on wiretaps or interrogations of potential suspects and sources - that feel reminiscent of moments from The Wire. The six episodes were adapted for the screen by The Wire creator David Simon and author George Pelecanos, who also worked on the previous Baltimore-set HBO drama, as did several of We Own This City’s other executive producers: Nina K. That said, it is impossible to watch We Own This City without thinking of The Wire. Based on the nonfiction book by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton about the Baltimore Police Department’s corrupt Gun Trace Task Force, it is its own compelling story in limited-series form. We Own This City is not a sequel to The Wire.

We own this city fenton