AFTER A ONE YEAR HIATUS, HBO’s other gripping crime drama, The Wire, finally returns for a new season. While The Sopranos gets all the accolades and takes home all the trophies, The Wire has evolved into the network’s most interesting show. Uncompromising and hard hitting, the series is the creation of David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter.
The new season of The Wire is something of a synthesis of Simon’s books, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and The Corner (co written with Edward Burns). In these two volumes, Simon tracks a year in the life of his subjects; Homicide followed Baltimore’s homicide department in 1988, tracking the detectives working the 234 murders recorded that year, while The Corner focused on the life of DeAndre McCullogh and those close to him–his drug addicted parents, his drug slinging friends, and the woman who runs the local rec center, among others.
