This idea is epitomised by a scene from the third season featuring one of my favourite characters, police major Howard "Bunny" Colvin, played by Robert Wisdom. Colvin is an experienced cop dismayed by how the focus on arrests and seizures of illegal drugs is creating a generation of police officers who have forgotten how to solve crimes. Colvin explains this to young sergeant Ellis Carver Seth Gilliam , noting that Carver has no sources in the neighbourhoods he's working in to tell him what's really happening there.
Instead, Carver and his compatriots act like an invading army, rolling into the area, arresting a bunch of young men, and rolling out again. And pretty soon, damn near everybody on every corner is your fuckin' enemy. And the neighbourhood you're supposed to be policing, that's just occupied territory. These days, it's accepted that 50 years of punitive policing hasn't stopped America's illegal drug trade; back in the mids, it was a much thornier concept for a TV cop show to tackle.
Still, The Wire always resisted what Simon called the "Thin Blue Line" narrative, where intrepid cops are depicted as the last line of defence against lawless drug dealers and addicts. By focusing its lens on the types of characters mainstream television rarely showcased, The Wire also gave us a vision of black people with the kind of depth US TV scarcely offered. Bringing life to those characters required serious actors.
And one of The Wire's most important legacies is the way it exposed TV audiences to performers who would later become household names. That roster starts with Elba, who played one of the series' most iconic characters and has since built a career ranging from Marvel movies and The Suicide Squad film to TV's Luther. One of The Wire's most important legacies is the way it exposed TV audiences to performers who would later become household names, such as Idris Elba Credit: Alamy.
Simon credits the show's casting directors, Alexa Fogel and Pat Moran, with finding amazing actors who weren't in a lot of high-profile projects. But he has another reason for why some of the show's performers weren't as well-known back then. Network TV was very unforgiving to shows that had a significant number of black characters. They thought white people wouldn't watch.
But HBO was not afraid of it. The actor who most embodied The Wire's success in finding remarkable performers to play singular roles is the late Michael K Williams. Williams gave life to another iconic character: Omar Little, the fearsome stick-up man who robbed drug dealers.
Omar was also openly gay, redefining and challenging ideas of black masculinity as a character who was undeniably cool, stuck to his own moral code and loved other men.
Williams would continue to push such boundaries in his future roles, earning an Emmy nomination playing a closeted gay man in HBO's s-set horror-fantasy drama Lovecraft Country before his death in September. But The Wire was his breakthrough — a golden opportunity for a young black man with a prominent facial scar who had previously appeared as a dancer in music videos. The late Michael K Williams played the iconic character Omar Little, who challenged traditional ideas about black masculinity Credit: Alamy.
To be sure, The Wire had its flaws. Its storylines could be tough to follow and the plots could be slow-moving. Its second season, focused on labour unions and the ports, and its final season, centred on the media, are often cited as weaker installments. The Wire expects more out of its audience than the average TV show, but it gives more in return.
A great deal of the season focused on the Sobotka family, framing their downfall like a proper Greek Tragedy. Renan spends most of his time passionately writing about video games, television, and film alongside raving about Dragon Ball on the internet. By Renan Fontes Updated Jul 07, Share Share Tweet Email 0.
Related Topics Lists the wire. RIP, Rubicon. RIP, Sense8. Most shows get better to some degree as they go along, in the same way that most people get better at their jobs the more that they do them. But how much they improve, how quickly, and how patient the audience is willing to be all make for some complicated and difficult math.
Nobody wants to miss out on something great, but how much time do they have to invest when so many great things are a click or two away? Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall uproxx.
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