We Own This City Vs The Wire: Which Is Better?

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Both We Own This City and The Wire are, in their own ways, iconic shows. We Own This City is a sobering, sucker punch of a mini-series. A true story of police corruption, dramatized and pulled together by the iconic duo George Pelecanos and David Simon, who both laid the project's dramatic foundations with The Wire. Both set in Baltimore, both unveiling the ugly side to policing and the institutions that enable it, and both written by Pelecanos and Simon, comparisons between the two were always going to be inevitable. The complete series of The Wire is a cultural juggernaut and picking a better show between the two almost seems unfair. But there are certain features that elevate one above the other.

The Wire was first broadcast in 2002 and ran for five seasons. Initially focused on the Baltimore Police Department and its investigation into the drug dealing Barksdale family, it expanded in subsequent seasons to encompass several institutions and their relationships with the Police. The show was immensely complex and Pelecanos and Simon went to great lengths to realistically capture the futility of police work, the lives of those caught in Baltimore’s criminal underbelly and the language they used. This push for realism and its drawn-out approach to story-telling – Simon wanted the show to be "novelistic", with a lack of exposition and each episode a chapter in a wider arc — initially saw The Wire garner low viewing figures. However, it has since been met with critical acclaim and lauded as one of the best crime dramas ever made. By contrast, We Own This City is a spiritual sequel to The Wire, based once again on the Baltimore Police Department but this time led by a true story involving the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF).