The Wire

• 1. Introduction

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  The Wire, David Simon once said, is "really about the American city, and about how we live together." That is an unusual claim for a crime drama. Simon, a former police reporter and the show's creator, wrote most of it himself for the cable network HBO. The series premiered on the 2nd of June 2002 and ended on the 9th of March 2008. In between, it ran for 60 episodes across five seasons, all set and produced in Baltimore, Maryland.

  The show gave the audience no narrator, no recaps of the plot inside the story, and very few easy victories. A drug crew, a police unit, a shipping port, a city hall, a school and a newspaper each take their turn at the center. Yet a program this demanding is now often named among the greatest ever made.

  How did a story about wiretaps and street corners come to be taught in university classrooms? Who were the people who built it, and why did they choose to cast so many unknowns? And what did Simon mean when he insisted that every person in the show, from the lowest dealer to the highest judge, is held captive by the institution they serve?

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• 2. Two Men and a Writer's Grudge

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  Ed Burns spent years chasing violent drug dealers with surveillance technology, and the thing that wore him down was his own employer. Burns, who served 20 years in the Baltimore Police Department before becoming a teacher in a public school, found the department's bureaucracy a constant obstacle. Simon recognized the feeling. He had met the same kind of resistance while covering police for The Baltimore Sun.

  The two men had already worked together on projects including The Corner, released in 2000. When Simon set out to build a new series, he first imagined a police drama loosely based on Burns's career.

  Simon also arrived with a bad memory of network television. He had written and produced Homicide: Life on the Street for NBC, a show drawn from his 1991 book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and set in the same city. NBC executives disliked its pessimism, and the clashes with them stayed with him. He decided that the next show would go to HBO, where he had enjoyed working on The Corner.

  HBO still hesitated, since a police drama was not what the network usually made. It agreed to pay for a pilot episode. Simon then went to the mayor of Baltimore and said plainly that he wanted to portray parts of the city in a bleak light. He was welcomed back anyway.

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• 3. Faces of Baltimore

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  Wendell Pierce, who plays the dry-witted Detective Bunk Moreland, was the first person cast. Dominic West won the part of Detective Jimmy McNulty, the nominal lead, after recording himself playing a scene alone the night before the audition deadline and sending in the tape. Lance Reddick came to read for Bunk and for the heroin addict Bubbles, and left with the role of Cedric Daniels instead. Michael K. Williams needed just one audition to become Omar Little.

  The part of Snoop went to someone found through Williams himself. He met Felicia Pearson at a local Baltimore bar, shortly after she had completed a prison sentence for a second degree murder conviction, and he recommended her.

  Critics praised the whole approach. The show avoided famous names and chose character actors who looked natural in their roles. Observers noted that the cast, taken together, showed a real range of human appearances that television rarely allowed.

  Some of the people on screen were not actors at all. A former governor of Maryland, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., took a minor role. So did the Reverend Frank M. Reid III, radio host Marc Steiner, former police chief Ed Norris, Sun editor David Ettlin, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman and former mayor Kurt Schmoke.

  Television itself supplied many more actors. More than a dozen cast members had appeared in HBO's first hour-long drama, Oz. Reddick, Reg E. Cathey, Seth Gilliam and J. D. Williams had prominent roles there. Others, among them Wood Harris, Frankie Faison, John Doman, Clarke Peters, Domenick Lombardozzi, Michael Hyatt, Michael Potts and Method Man, turned up in at least one episode.

  Six more actors, Erik Dellums, Peter Gerety, Clark Johnson, Clayton LeBouef, Toni Lewis and Callie Thorne, had worked on Homicide. The Corner contributed a further group, including Robert F. Chew, who would go on to play the cautious kingpin Proposition Joe.

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• 4. Behind the Camera

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  Robert F. Colesberry, a veteran of The Corner, was the show's executive producer for its first two seasons. He directed the second season finale and also appeared in a small role as Detective Ray Cole. Simon credits him with creating the show's realistic visual feel. Colesberry died in 2004 from complications of heart surgery.

  His wife, Karen L. Thorson, had joined him on the production staff. Nina Kostroff Noble, another producer from The Corner, completed the original team of four. After Colesberry's death she became the second executive producer, working beside Simon.

  The writers came from several directions. Burns often co-wrote stories and became a producer in the fourth season. Three acclaimed crime novelists from other cities also joined: George Pelecanos of Washington, Richard Price of the Bronx and Dennis Lehane of Boston. Reviewers had compared Price's novel Clockers to The Wire before he ever wrote for it. Pelecanos said the chance to work with Simon was what drew him in, and he served as a producer for the third season.

  Rafael Alvarez, a Baltimore native with working experience around the port, wrote several scripts and the series guidebook The Wire: Truth Be Told. He was also a colleague of Simon's from The Baltimore Sun. Joy Lusco, a Baltimore filmmaker, wrote in each of the first three seasons. William F. Zorzi, a Sun political journalist, arrived in season three with deep knowledge of the city's politics.

  The fourth season brought two more writers. Eric Overmyer, a playwright and television producer who had worked on Homicide, joined as a consulting producer to replace Pelecanos, who had scaled back to focus on his next book. David Mills, a Primetime Emmy Award winner and college friend of Simon, also joined.

  Among the directors were Clark Johnson, who had also directed episodes of The Shield, and Tim Van Patten, who had worked on every season of The Sopranos. Their style was praised as subtle and uncomplicated. After Colesberry died, director Joe Chappelle became a co-executive producer. In the fifth season Johnson stepped in front of the camera for the first time on the show, playing a newspaper editor.

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• 5. A Visual Novel With a Jukebox

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  Every episode starts with a cold open that seldom contains a dramatic peak. Then the screen goes to black, the theme fades in, and a title sequence of close-ups begins. Its fast cutting is a technique the show almost never uses in its own scenes. The credits list only actors' names, without saying who plays whom.

  At the end of each sequence a line appears on screen, normally spoken by a character in that episode. Three episodes break the pattern. The first season finale shows the phrase "All in the game," attributed to "Traditional West Baltimore." The fourth season finale shows the words "If animal trapped call 410-844-6286," painted on boarded-up houses. The series finale begins with a quotation from H. L. Mencken seen on a wall at The Baltimore Sun.

  Stories often unfold in several places at once, and episodes rarely end on a cliffhanger. Simon describes the series as a visual novel and each episode as a chapter. Seasons of 10 to 13 episodes let long arcs build toward a stronger payoff.

  The form asks a lot of viewers. Key events happen off screen, and there is no voice-over to explain them. Only two flashbacks exist in the entire run. One, at the end of the pilot, replays a moment from earlier in the same episode. The other, at the end of the fourth season finale, shows a character tutoring his younger brother. Salon called the show novelistic.

  The music follows similar rules. Instead of laying songs over scenes or hiring a score, the series mostly uses music that comes from inside the scene, like a car radio or a jukebox. The exceptions are the end-of-season montages and an occasional overlap of the closing theme with a last shot.

  The opening song, "Way Down in the Hole," was written by Tom Waits for his 1987 album Franks Wild Years. Each season uses a new recording, performed by The Blind Boys of Alabama, Waits, The Neville Brothers, DoMaJe and Steve Earle. The fourth season version was arranged for the show and sung by five Baltimore teenagers: Ivan Ashford, Markel Steele, Cameron Brown, Tariq Al-Sabir and Avery Bargasse. Earle, who performed the fifth, also acts in the cast as the recovering addict Walon.

  Blake Leyh, the music supervisor, composed the closing theme, "The Fall." The finale montages use Jesse Winchester's "Step by Step," Earle's "I Feel Alright," Solomon Burke's "Fast Train," Paul Weller's version of "I Walk on Gilded Splinters" and a longer take of "Way Down in the Hole."

  Simon says he dislikes lyrics that match the picture too exactly. In his words, it "brutalizes the visual," yet the song "has to glance at what you're trying to say." Nonesuch Records released two soundtrack albums on the 8th of January 2008. One of them, Beyond Hamsterdam, contains only local Baltimore artists.

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• 6. Institutions and the People Inside Them

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  Donnie Andrews was the main inspiration for Omar Little, and Martin O'Malley was one of the inspirations for Tommy Carcetti. Simon has said that most of the characters are composites of real Baltimore figures. That choice reflects how the writers built their world. Simon had spent a year researching a homicide unit for his book, where he met Burns. The two then spent another year studying drug culture and poverty for The Corner. Both projects fed storylines.

  Simon argues that even the best police in the show are driven less by duty than by the vanity of thinking they are smarter than the criminals. Many officers are incompetent, brutal, self-promoting or trapped by politics. The criminals are not simple villains either. Many are stuck in their lives, and all have human qualities, though the show never softens the damage they cause.

  The accuracy was noticed outside the writers' room. There have been reports of real criminals watching in order to learn how to defeat police investigations. In 2007 Brian Lowry of Variety called the fifth season's newsroom the most realistic portrayal of the media in film and television. A Washington Post article from December 2006 quoted local black students who said the show had "hit a nerve." They knew real counterparts of many of its characters.

  Simon lists the police department, City Hall, the school system, the Barksdale drug organization, The Baltimore Sun and the stevedores' union as comparable institutions, each dysfunctional in its own way. The characters are typically betrayed by the very institutions they commit to. One narcotics detective sums up the pattern in a line: "Shit rolls downhill." Superiors in the police hierarchy push blame onto subordinates whenever scandal looms. Simon calls the show cynical about institutions but humane toward people.

  That view shapes who survives. Major characters die, so viewers cannot assume that stardom or popularity will protect anyone. Simon once answered a question about such a death directly: "We are not selling hope, or audience gratification, or cheap victories with this show." He added, "It is, I'm afraid, a somewhat angry show."

  The title points to the machinery of the first story. The police rely on wiretaps, and Salon read this as a metaphor for the audience, who are given secret access to a hidden world in the same way. Simon has also described using shots of surveillance equipment, or shots from its viewpoint, to show how much surveillance fills modern life and how much information the characters must sift through.

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• 7. Five Seasons, Five Systems

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  The first season, set in 2002 and spanning 13 episodes, begins with an acquittal. D'Angelo Barksdale walks free of a murder charge after a key witness changes her story. Detective Jimmy McNulty then privately tells Judge Daniel Phelan that the witness was probably intimidated by his uncle Avon Barksdale's organization. The judge pressures senior police figures, who set up a detail they intend only as a show to calm him down.

  The detail turns to wiretaps and pager clones. Detective Kima Greggs is badly hurt during a sting, and the department overreacts. Wallace, a young dealer who fled to relatives, returns to Baltimore and is killed by his childhood friends Bodie and Poot on Stringer Bell's orders. D'Angelo is ready to cooperate, but his mother persuades him to take the charges for the family. Wee-Bey Brice confesses to most of the murders, including some he did not commit. Stringer escapes prosecution, and the officers who challenged their superiors are punished. Daniels is passed over for promotion and McNulty goes to the marine unit.

  The second season, from 2003, moves to the docks. Thirteen unidentified young women are found dead in a shipping container. McNulty, still resentful, steers the case toward his former commander. Meanwhile Major Stan Valchek feuds with Frank Sobotka, a leader of a fictional dockers' union, over donations to their old neighborhood church. Sobotka tries to save his union by turning to a smuggling ring that answers to a mysterious figure called The Greek.

  Sobotka agrees to cooperate after his son Ziggy is charged with murder, and The Greek learns of it through a mole in the FBI and has him killed. The detail solves 14 homicides, but the person responsible is already dead, and The Greek escapes. Simon described this season as "a meditation on the death of work and the betrayal of the American working class."

  The third season, from 2004, brings Hamsterdam. Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin, nearing retirement, quietly creates a few empty blocks where police tolerate drug dealing but crack down on violence. Crime falls in his district for many weeks. When his superiors, the media and politicians find out, the experiment ends, and Colvin is demoted and retires on a lower pension. The season also draws parallels between the Iraq War and drug prohibition, and introduces Tommy Carcetti's run for mayor.

  In the same season Stringer Bell, trying to run the organization like a legitimate business, is shot dead by Brother Mouzone and Omar after Avon tips off Mouzone. The police arrest Avon and most of his people. The empire collapses, and Marlo Stanfield's crew moves into its territory.

  The fourth season, from 2006, follows four West Baltimore boys entering the eighth grade: Dukie, Randy, Michael and Namond. Prez has become a math teacher at their school. Burns, who taught in a city school, called education the theme. He meant lessons learned from many sources, including the drug dealers the children work for.

  Marlo's enforcers Chris Partlow and Snoop hide their victims in boarded-up row houses, and Freamon eventually discovers the bodies. Bodie is shot dead on his corner after offering McNulty testimony against Marlo. Randy's foster mother is hospitalized when bullies firebomb their house. Michael joins Marlo's killers, while Colvin takes Namond into his home. Carcetti wins the primary on his way to becoming mayor.

  The fifth season, from 2008, turns to the press. According to Simon, it deals with "what stories get told and what don't and why it is that things stay the same." Mayor Carcetti's police budget cuts shut down the Stanfield investigation. McNulty answers by faking evidence that a serial killer is murdering homeless men, in order to bring funds back. At the newspaper, reporter Scott Templeton claims the killer has contacted him, and city editor Gus Haynes grows suspicious while his superiors do not.

  Omar returns from retirement after Marlo has Omar's mentor Butchie murdered. He wages a campaign against Marlo's organization but is shot and killed by a young dealer named Kenard. Freamon and Leander Sydnor build a case that jails most of Marlo's lieutenants, but a wiretap secretly funded by the fake serial killer investigation makes the case fragile. Marlo walks free on condition that he retires.

  The finale montage shows Templeton winning a Pulitzer, Carcetti becoming Governor and Haynes moved to the copy desk. Michael Lee takes Omar's place as the city's stick-up boy. Bubbles, recovering in his sister's basement, is finally invited upstairs to a family dinner. The drug trade continues, and the people of Baltimore go on with their lives.

  During the fifth season HBO also produced three short prequels. They show McNulty and Bunk meeting for the first time, Proposition Joe as a slick young businessman, and a young Omar. They appear on the complete series DVD set.

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• 8. Loved by Critics, Ignored by Voters

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  The Wire's first season scored 79 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 22 reviews. Some critics even placed it above HBO's better-known flagships, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. Seasons three and four earned a weighted average score of 98.

  The audience did not follow. Nielsen ratings were poor, and Simon blamed the complicated plot, a bad time slot, heavy slang and a predominantly black cast. By the end of the third season the show faced possible cancellation. Simon blamed Desperate Housewives for part of the problem and worried that expectations of HBO dramas had shifted after The Sopranos. The Baltimore City Paper was so alarmed that it published ten reasons to keep the show on the air.

  Critics kept escalating their praise. After two episodes of the second season, Jim Shelley of The Guardian called it the best show on television. Entertainment Weekly named it the best show of 2004. Of the fourth season, Time wrote that "no other TV show has ever loved a city so well, damned it so passionately, or sung it so searingly." The Los Angeles Times took the rare step of writing an editorial about it.

  Rankings later piled up. Time listed it among the hundred best series in 2007. The Writers Guild of America ranked it the ninth best written series in 2013. Rolling Stone placed it second in 2016. In 2021 the BBC put it first on its list of the greatest television series of the 21st century.

  Awards were a different story. The Wire never won a Primetime Emmy Award and received only two writing nominations. Variety reported that anonymous voters cited the dense plot, grim subject matter, and a lack of any connection to California. The series did win a Peabody Award for season two and a Writers Guild of America Award for season four. It was also nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Drama Series in each of its five seasons.

  Its admirers included prominent names. Barack Obama has called it his favorite television series. The Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa reviewed it warmly in El País. Jón Gnarr, the comedian who became mayor of Reykjavik, said he would not join a coalition with anyone who had not watched it. Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead, cast Chad Coleman, Lawrence Gilliard Jr., Seth Gilliam and Merritt Wever from The Wire in his own series.

  Universities followed. Johns Hopkins, Brown and Harvard have offered classes on the series in fields from law to sociology to film studies, and Phillips Academy, a Massachusetts boarding school, has a similar course. Anmol Chaddha and William Julius Wilson wrote that Harvard chose it for a course on urban inequality because scholars usually study deindustrialization, crime and prisons, and schools one at a time. A drama can weave them together. Roger Burrows, head of sociology at the University of York, called it a contrast to "dry, dull, hugely expensive studies" of the same issues.

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