HBO's The Wire Follow-Up Makes Stringer Bell's Dream A Nightmare
Stringer Bell’s dreams of legitimizing his criminal empire are cast aside in HBO’s new series We Own This City — making his long-held dream a nightmare. More than 14 years after the ending of the popular HBO crime series The Wire, creator and former police reporter David Simon has returned to the platform with another Baltimore-based story of institutional rot. Although Stringer Bell and his associates are largely a distant memory in We Own This City, more shocking is that Bell’s aspirations to overhaul Baltimore’s criminal underbelly seem to be all but forgotten as well.
We Own This City is based on the 2021 nonfiction book We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton. The story details the rise and eventual fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force and the corruption that led to its demise. The story was adapted for HBO by David Simon and frequent collaborator George Pelecanos and stars The Punisher'sJon Bernthal as the notorious Wayne Jenkins.
Related: We Own This City Breaks The Wire’s Cardinal Rule
We Own This City is more of a spiritual successor to The Wire than a direct sequel, sharing similar themes and tone with its predecessor while telling a true story with a cast of characters based on real people. Much like The Wire, We Own This City explores the impact that one person’s misguided or criminal actions can have on their surroundings, this time scrutinizing the actions of the Baltimore Police and the GTTF. While the show is a timely contemplation of the corrupting power of law enforcement, the moral degradation of a legitimate business such as the Baltimore Police feels like a perverse twist on the overarching desires of the late
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