‘The Wire’: A Cultural History

British crime-series maven Lamb (You’re Nicked: Investigating British Television Police Series) suggests that the HBO series The Wire (2002–08) has themes from Greek mythology and, more credibly, Dickensian social realism and forms an evolutionary link in U.S. programs from Dragnet through NYPD Blue. Unlike them, this surveillance show is steeped in the grittiness of unindustrialized Baltimore and the still contemporary challenges of racism, the ineffective War on Drugs, changing social and sexual roles, and generational loss of expectations. David Simon, former police reporter for the Baltimore Sun, and Ed Burns, a veteran homicide detective who became a schoolteacher, produced The Wire’s 60 episodes with insider acuity. Initially attracting an average audience, it featured a Black cast including many untrained locals, plus actors who only later became famous (such as Idris Elba and Michael B. Jordan). Lamb states that each of the five seasons focuses on fallible institutions and how they adversely affect people—the drug trade structure, the Baltimore port and the decline of the working class, city government, bureaucracy, the school system, and the newspaper industry.