The cast of The Wire sits around a computer in the officeImage via HBO
By
Ryan Heffernan
Published 14 minutes ago
Ryan Heffernan is a Senior Writer at Collider. Storytelling has been one of his interests since an early age, with his appreciation for film and television becoming a particular interest of his during his teenage years.
This passion saw Ryan graduate from the University of Canberra in 2020 with an Honours Degree in Film Production. In the years since, he has found freelance work as a videographer and editor in the Canberra region while also becoming entrenched in the city's film-making community.
In addition to cinema and writing, Ryan's other major interest is sport, with him having a particular love for Australian Rules football, Formula 1, and cricket. He also has casual interests in reading, gaming, and history.
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23 years have passed since The Wire debuted on screens, but the HBO crime odyssey remains the sharpest and most viscerally impactful series the genre has ever seen. An all-encompassing deep dive into the drug trade of Baltimore that also has a keen interest in the minutiae of the city’s police force and political landscape, the series is a sublime dissection of failing institutions and the societal fallout of the war on drugs.
Such is the brilliance of the series, many fans would understandably suggest that when one wants to watch a show like The Wire, they simply start re-watching The Wire, but the annals of television entertainment are rich with introspective stories perfectly suited to fans of the show that can offer something slightly different. Ranging from further collaborations of The Wire creators David Simon and Ed Burns to other enthralling crime series, these 10 shows are essential viewing for those still loving all the drama and richness B-more has to offer.
10 'High Maintenance' (2012–2020)
The Guy (Ben Sinclair), a bearded man, cycles outside through New York with a backpack carrying his dog in 'High Maintenance' (2012-2020).Image via HBO
An excellent recommendation for someone who has just finished watching or re-watching The Wire, High Maintenance maintains a focus on the drug trade, though it tackles it in a starkly different light. A profoundly humanistic comedy-drama anthology series, it follows a bike-riding marijuana dealer as he ventures around New York to deliver weed to his clients, with his dealings being depicted as tender and often comical vignettes prying into the daily routines of his eclectic range of clients.
Starting as a web series, High Maintenance aired as six cycles on Vimeo from 2012 to 2015 before it was picked up by HBO, where it ran for four seasons from 2016 to 2020. Its ties to The Wire are vague at best, but it does present a more ordinary and understandable reality in which drug-dealing transpires, examining users and dealers alike as normal, unexceptional people trying to navigate life as best they can.
9 'Generation Kill' (2007)
Jon Huertas, Alexander Skarsgård, and Lee Tergesen as soldiers with weapons in a town in Generation Kill.Image via HBO
It should come as no surprise that other series handled by The Wire creators David Simon and Ed Burns are featured prolifically on this list. One of the duo’s best and most enticing offerings comes in the form of the 2007 war miniseries, Generation Kill. Working with journalist Evan Wright to adapt his nonfiction book of the same name, the seven-part war miniseries examines the invasion of Iraq from the perspective of the U.S. Marine Corps’ 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, covering the multitude of issues they encounter as they travel towards Baghdad.
Reveling in the minutiae of bureaucratic red tape, communication failings, and the inactive boredom the soldiers face for extended bouts of the campaign, Generation Kill is intrinsically interested in the fine details of combat life, using the focus to dissect the pitfalls and functionality of military procedure with outstanding insight and compelling realism. It matches The Wire’s attention to detail, presenting an absorbing and authentic dramatization of the start of the Iraq War, imbued with everything from sequences of bonding between soldiers to the execution of civilians to paint a holistic and complex illustration of modern warfare.
8 'Snowfall' (2017–2023)
Snowfall Season 6Image via FX
With a keen sense of realism and a thematic focus on the lives that are impacted by the drug trade, Snowfall quickly stamped itself as a powerful and provocative crime drama with several similarities to The Wire. It revolves around the crack epidemic in mid-1980s Los Angeles, focusing on Franklin Saint (Damson Idris) as he leads his family down the path of drug dealing. His venture sets him on a path that will see him collide with several prominent figures in the Mexican drug trade as well as an undercover CIA operative fighting communism in Nicaragua.
Snowfall doesn’t present itself as being a copy of The Wire adjusted for L.A., but its integral focus on gritty characters, the grim realities of crime, and its exploration of the impact the drug trade has on a community are certainly thematic notes that have an air of familiarity to them. However, Snowfall still endeavors to make itself unique, with its intriguing historical context and its emphasis on the complicated dynamics of the Saint family, endowing it with its own focal points that compel audiences.
7 'Oz' (1997–2003)
Warden Glynn, Kareem Said, Augustus Hill, and Tim McManus stand in front of prison bars in Oz.Image via HBO
A contemporary of The Wire, which is a similarly influential series, not only in HBO’s rise to prominence, but in the emergence of television as a prestige form of dramatic entertainment as well, Oz is a brutal illustration of life in a maximum-security prison. It transpires in an experimental new unit known as Emerald City that is designed to emphasize rehabilitation over punitive measures, but functions as a nightmarish descent into criminal captivity where violence is everywhere and redemption is sought by few.
At its best, Oz is a brutal and scarring depiction of life behind bars that soars off the back of its vast ensemble of characters, its litany of plot threads, and its maddening immersion into the dread and depravity of prison. Sadly, the series isn’t able to maintain this brilliance all the way through its six-season run, but as a compelling look at criminal personalities that blends the heinousness of violence with undertones of humanity and hope, Oz is an enticing watch, and it will always stand as a landmark title in the context of the establishment of television’s golden era.
6 'Treme' (2010–2013)
Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce) sits outside on a sunny day playing the trumpet as part of a band in 'Treme' (2010-2013).Image via HBO
In August 2005, New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, one of the worst storms in American history, and one that had severe long-term ramifications on the city and its people. Treme is an admirable effort to illustrate the resilience and suffering of the New Orleans community in the aftermath. Beginning three months after the hurricane, it explores the difficulties residents face as they try to rebuild their lives and their cultural richness as the rest of the country blindly moves on from the tragedy.
David Simon works alongside Eric Overmyer to deliver a series of pointed and poignant pathos. The thematic breadth of the series sprawls to encompass not only perseverance, grief, and trauma, but complex cultural notions like racism, class, and the ineptitude of societal institutions as well. Able to handle these confronting ideas while still celebrating New Orleans staples such as food and music with triumphant gusto, Treme is a poised and precise balancing act that offers four compelling seasons of community-focused drama perfect for those who enjoy the scope and storytelling of The Wire.
5 'Chernobyl' (2019)
Boris (Stellan Skarsgård) and Valery (Jared Harris) stand outside in 'Chernobyl.'Image via HBO
Standing as one of HBO’s defining highlights of the 2010s, if not of all time, Chernobyl is a grueling yet captivating immersion in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster of 1986. Over the course of five outstanding episodes, the miniseries explores the immediate efforts to contain the fallout, the threat the blown reactor posed to mainland Europe and beyond, and the political attempts to cover up the severity of the incident on the global stage.
Beautifully performed, Chernobyl is the pinnacle of prestige drama, and it finds a resemblance to The Wire in its razor-sharp writing that takes aim at institutionalized corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency while operating with a sense of scale that perfectly illustrates the magnitude of the catastrophe. Historically enlightening, thematically insightful, and able to pay tribute to the many heroes who prevented the worst-case scenario while simultaneously criticizing the system they worked within, Chernobyl is an essential masterpiece that everyone should see.
4 'The Shield' (2002–2008)
Michael Chiklis as Vic wearing sunglasses and holding a gun beside a dusty vehicle on The Shield.Image via FX
Running co-adjacently to The Wire through the 2000s, The Shield is a visceral plunge into the chaos and callousness of police corruption following Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) and his colleagues in the Strike Team. Working in a crime-riddled area of Los Angeles where gang violence runs riot, the experimental unit exploits their authority and power, using illegal methods in a dogmatic approach to maintaining law and order while getting rich through their corrupt dealings in the field.
It operates at a faster and more relentless pace than The Wire—occasionally to its own detriment—but The Shield’s focus on the complexities of morality in a world of crime makes it an absorbing viewing experience rife with challenging characters and searing intensity. It is a defining title of television’s golden run through the 2000s and 2010s, a scorching and provocative crime drama that stands as one of the best series the genre has ever seen.
3 'Homicide: Life on the Street' (1993–1999)
Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) stands in a graffiti-covered and trashed industrial space, holding up a pistol as a uniform cop and a colleague stand around him in 'Homicide: Life on the Street' (1993-1999).NBC
Based on David Simon’s 1991 non-fiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which detailed his experiences over the course of a year with the Baltimore Police Department’s Homicide Unit, Homicide: Life on the Street is easy to embrace as a spiritual precursor to The Wire. With a grounded, gritty reality, the series is a noteworthy success of '90s television, given how it imbued the police drama genre with an air of authenticity.
Its thematic interest in Baltimore’s institutional issues and inadequacies set the groundwork for what The Wire would explore in intricate detail, ensnaring viewers in its real-world drama rich with documentary-style intensity. While its visceral excellence doesn’t quite last throughout the entirety of its seven-season run, Homicide: Life on the Street is still a must-see series, one that is instrumental in pioneering television’s golden age, and one that is a gripping first draft of The Wire’s focus on the inner workings of the BPD.
2 'The Corner' (2000)
Two people sitting on concrete steps and talking in The Corner.Image via HBO
Another easily identifiable forerunner to The Wire, The Corner stands as David Simon’s first foray into working as a showrunner and, based on another of his non-fiction books exploring crime in Baltimore, exudes a similar sense of grit and character-led intrigue to his other crime projects. Running for just six episodes, the sharp and succinct miniseries follows the McCullough family living in poverty in West Baltimore, delving into their issues of addiction and hopelessness as a drug war rages on the streets of their neighborhood.
In concentrating its focus on the streets and the lives of those simply living in the vicinity of gang violence, The Corner proves to be a more intimate look at Baltimore’s drug-ravaged districts. The bleak and depressing tone it presents is arguably even more devastating than The Wire, a piercing byproduct of its source material, which was the result of Simon and co-writer Ed Burns spending years working with people in the neighborhood, including the real McCullough family, in order to understand and humanize the issues they face.
1 'We Own This City' (2022)
Officer Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal) leading his Gun Task Force team down a sidewalk in 'We Own This City'.Image via HBO
If The Corner and Homicide: Life on the Street are spiritual prequels to The Wire, then HBO’s six-part biographical miniseries We Own This City is a spiritual successor. Based on Justin Fenton’s non-fiction book of the same name, it follows the rise and fall of the BPD’s Gun Trace Task Force, examining the corruption and illegal practices of several of its integral members, particularly Sgt. Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthall).
Framed as an FBI investigation taking place in 2017, the miniseries implements a convoluted non-linear narrative that is unforgiving to viewers who aren’t prepared to mentally invest in the story. However, viewers who do keep up with the series’ frenetic progression are treated to an engrossing story about immorality, police corruption, the faults in the system that make accountability a futile endeavor, and the simmering, racially-motivated tensions between law enforcement and citizens. It is a hidden masterpiece of modern crime television and, with David Simon and Ed Burns’s input, it strikes a ferocious tone of grounded realism perfect for TV fans looking for something like The Wire to immerse themselves in.
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We Own This City
Thriller
Release Date
2022 - 2022-00-00
Network
HBO Max
Directors
Josh Charles
Writers
Josh Charles
Cast
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Jon Bernthal
Sgt. Wayne Jenkins
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Wunmi Mosaku
Nicole Steele
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Jamie Hector
Sean M. Suiter
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Josh Charles
Daniel Hersl
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