TV review: The Wire was brilliant and We Own This City is just as good
We Own This City is a real-life story, pivoting on eight officers from the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force
The Wire was brilliant, but it’s a daunting five seasons with strong Baltimore (USA) accents if you haven’t seen it.
Not to worry — (Sky Atlantic and NOW TV app) is just as good. It’s the same writer (David Simon) looking at policing and gangs in the same city (Baltimore) and the accents aren’t as hard. In fairness, that’s probably because The Wire started a trend of realistic accents and we’re used to putting in the work to understand them.
Where The Wire eased us into the crossroads of politics, race and policing, We Own This City is a gripper from the first episode. It’s a real-life story, pivoting on eight officers from the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force — they were right bad 'uns, convicted of racketeering and extortion among other things in 2017.
This is the story of how they were caught, but like everything else David Simon does, it’s about a lot more as well. If you ever wonder where the Black Lives Matter movement came from, watch 10 minutes of We Own This City and you’ll get it (you might even join the movement).
While high-profile shootings by police bring matters to a head, it’s the low-level harassment of African Americans that lay the groundwork. It’s brought to life here by Detective Daniel Hersl, a particularly nasty piece of work who is shown assaulting and humiliating people for what looks like pleasure.
Just as in The Wire, David Simon brings us into the heart of the action. His trick of using background sound — hip-hop music at a drug-dealing location, the constant babble of the police radio — makes it feel like we are walking around behind the characters, rather than observing them.
The convicted cops are different shade of bad. Hersl is proper bad, while another detective, Wayne Jenkins, has a wild-eyed cocky charisma that invites you to see things from his side of the fence.
But it’s the story-telling that makes this show. For the first 15 minutes, it felt like I was watching a police procedural, another episode of Law & Order, as we joined drug squad cops on an everyday bit of surveillance. Next thing I know, we’re with a civil rights lawyer, trying to find out why cops with a string of complaints against them are still out on the street.
Then it gets confusing, when three gang members steal another dealer’s drug stash, but the next morning I see them out on the beat, wearing Baltimore Police Department stab vests.
The plot unfolds from here, jumping around in time a bit, because all TV shows must jump around in time now, for reasons that aren’t very clear.
It doesn’t matter. We Own This City is like getting a hug from The Wire, a short and sharp reminder of the best TV show I’ve ever seen. And if you liked Sgt Jay Landsman in the five seasons of The Wire, he’s the police commissioner in this, hogging every scene he enters. It’s a gem.
