Is We Own This City A Sequel To The Wire?

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HBO's We Own This City reunites The Wire creator David Simon, George Pelecanos, and several cast members from the iconic HBO show, but are the two linked more closely? Already, very positive reviews for We Own This City have explored links to The Wire and it's somewhat inevitable that Simon's involvement would inspire parallels. But We Own This City is so much more than a belated The Wire season 6.

Set in a Baltimore still fighting the war on drugs that The Wire called never-ending, We Own This City is a dramatized, but very much real account of the BPD Gun Trace Task Force, led by Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal) who were revealed to be running a criminal racket throughout the city. Just as Michael K Williams' Omar Little taxed drug dealers in The Wire, Jenkins' crew stole money and drugs from Baltimore's drug dealers for their own profit, taking an era of police brutality to another level.

Related: Why The Wire Season 2 Is So Divisive (& Why It's Great)

While We Own This City is not a direct follow-up to The Wire, both are based on the real-life experiences of the people of Baltimore and their relationship with law enforcement. Rather than being based on the experiences of David Simon and writing partner Ed Burns, We Own This City is based on a book by Baltimore Star journalist Justin Fenton, with some dramatized details thrown in. The fact that the worlds of both shows feel so similar is a chilling indictment of the failure of The Wire's chief objectives — to politically agitate change in the system — and explains why Simon didn't reboot The Wire in its place. If The Wire held hope that the system was flawed but not corrupt, We Own This City takes a step further. It's a sequel to The Wire in spirit, because it answers the