Saturday 16 July 2022

We Own This City (2022 Reinaldo Marcus Green)

Y'know - King Richard. Before that, three episodes of Top Boy.

David Simon and George Pelecanos were showrunners on The Wire, but this is based on a non-fiction account of police corruption from Baltimore Sun journalist Justin Fenton (Simon introduced him to his publisher for a book deal, not thinking about making a TV version of it), so it feels like familiar Simon territory. Yes, I can't read any more of that interview as I've inadvertently read about the death of a character. But they definitely feel police corruption is now worse than it was in The Wire days. (Jimmy McNulty may have been unorthodox, to say the least, but at least he got results. These guys get results actually - they're just pocketing most of the cash and drugs they seize.)

It's quite complex, jumping between time zones, but very absorbing. And ultimately shattering, that the corruption extended way up as well. And that the war on drugs is lost. And that under Trump, civil rights went right on the back burner.

Jon Bernthal, Wunmi Mosaku (Temple, Luther, Capital, Dancing on the Edge), Jamie Hector (homicide cop), Josh Charles (The Good Wife), McKinley Belcher III (the least bad of the corrupt unit), Darrell Britt-Gibson, David Corenswet, Don Harvey, Delaney Williams (police commissioner), Larry Mitchell.

A six part series for Sky, edited by Matthew Booras and Joshua Raymond Lee, photographed by Yaron Orbach (Modern Love, Sing Street).

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