HBO's The Wire Follow-Up Finally Addressed Its 1 Huge Weakness

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HBO's We Own This City, which functions as a sort of pseudo-follow-up to the platform's hit series The Wire, finally addresses one of the latter show's biggest weaknesses. We Own This City is an unflinching limited series based on real stories of police corruption in the crime-laden city of Baltimore, Maryland. A slew of characters are followed throughout the series' six-episode timeline, all helping to tell the tale of the infamous BPD Gun Trace Task Force's heyday and eventual takedown by other law enforcement officers in 2017. However, despicably unjust, illegal police work and America's «war on drugs» aren't the only issues We Own This City touches upon. The project also addresses a huge weakness with another popular HBO show from years past, The Wire.

The Wire premiered in 2002, one of many gritty, anti-hero-featuring shows of its decade. The drama gave a realistic look — often, not pretty — at law enforcement, lawyers, politicians, criminals, and many more in Baltimore. A large, diverse cast of characters drove The Wire for 5 seasons until it concluded in 2008. The show's fanbase has only grown since then, and it's now widely regarded (for good reason) as one of the greatest series from the «golden era of TV» in the early 2000s. The Wire writers David Simon and George Pelecanos teamed up with HBO once again to bring forth 2022's We Own This City, which tells a more updated, directly-real-life-based story of crime, law enforcement, and how the two worlds often overlap in Baltimore. Though We Own This City is not a sequel to The Wire, its writers, setting, and even some of its cast certainly make it feel and function like a follow-up of sorts.

Related: We Own This City Ending Explained (In Detail)

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