We Own This City review: A shocking police corruption story

We have this city that will inevitably draw comparisons to The Wire, given its shared Baltimore setting, and while the latter is the biggest achievement, it’s not necessarily the most significant of the similarities. As much as we have this city covering a lot of ground, The Wire has extended beyond policing to an entire urban environment, capturing how each element of the social and political economy is interconnected. We Own This City places particular emphasis on policing, and notes that it has worsened actively since the early 2000s when The Wire was set.

The series spends considerable time in the run-up to Donald Trump’s election in 2016, allowing Simon and Pelicanos to show how a lack of justice for the black dead, combined with economic displacement and a politically polarized culture, exacerbates distrust of the police, who are in turn portrayed as watching The people you’re supposed to protect with active contempt.

Despite the frank nostalgic scenes of detectives filling in on wiretaps and the numerous star appearances of The Wire, the most fitting point compared to We Own This City is the 1981 film Prince of Town Sidney Lumet, which is based on another real-life story about police corruption. It’s no wonder the movie’s star, Treat Williams, makes a crucial cameo that almost winks at the series.

We own this city with various minor problems. All-around stellar performances from the cast are often overlooked by Reinaldo Marcus Green’s routine direction. The drama can feel a little mechanical at times, likely because it aligns so closely with the realities of the real-world case, and the story involving Suiter in particular is sometimes anointed as a very symbolic contrast to the GTTF story, as if it clumsily underscores the fact that there are men Good police nearby.

But when the string heads into the home extension and all the pieces start to connect the way the Simon string that it leads can, those flaws tend to fade from memory. Few other writers make television novels like this one, whose pessimistic view of the world accurately reflects the fact that despite the huge number of people trying to do the right thing, there is plenty of money to ensure that systemic failure thrives.

★★★★ ☆

We’re owning this city for the first time on HBO in the US on April 25 and on Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK in June

Do you like movies and TV? join BBC Film and TV Cultural Club On Facebook, a community for movie lovers around the world.

If you’d like to comment on this story or anything else you’ve seen on BBC Culture, head over to our site Facebook Page or email us at Twitter.

And if you like this story, Subscribe to the bbc.com weekly newsletter, called the main menu. A hand-picked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Worklife and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.