The Wire creator thinks his show couldn’t get made post-Game of Thrones

This year marks the 20th anniversary of The Wire, the landmark HBO drama series created by David Simon and Ed Burns. Drawing on Simon’s experience as a journalist and Burns’ time as a cop, the show explored life in the city of Baltimore, with each season looking at a different institution, from the police to unions to politics to public schools.

Simon and Burns are back with a new HBO series: We Own This City, which tells the true story of Baltimore’s corrupt Gun Task Force. The pair are out promoting it, and Burns in particular had some interesting things to say about how TV has changed since The Wire wrapped up in 2008.

Basically, Burns said that The Wire could “definitely not” have been made on HBO if it had been pitched today. “Now, it’s got to be Game of Thrones. It’s got to be big. It’s got to be disconnected from stepping on anybody’s toes,” he told The New York Times. “I’ve watched a couple of the limited series on HBO, and they’re good shows, but they’re not cutting new paths. They are whodunits or these rich women bickering among themselves in a town. I don’t see anybody saying, ‘Hey, that’s a really great show.’”

“HBO wouldn’t greenlight a show like The Wire today,” says man promoting his Baltimore cop drama on HBO

Now…I’ve gotta point out the obvious irony here: Ed Burns is promoting his new true-to-life gritty HBO cop drama that is very much like The Wire…and complaining that HBO wouldn’t greenlight a show like The Wire today. I realize that the success of The Wire helped him get his foot in the door, but still, that’s funny, right?

As for his complaints about shows needing to be “big,” it’s true that the success of Game of Thrones has inspired HBO (and many others) to invest in splashier, showier series like Westworld and The Gilded Age. But they’ve had still plenty of smaller-scale hits, too, like Mare of Easttown, Euphoria, The White Lotus and even Succession. Those series perhaps aren’t as gritty as the HBO shows that were running alongside The Wire, but HBO has always traded in fluff. Hell, one of their biggest shows ever was Sex in the City and that finished before The Wire even started.

We Own This City does look pretty good…but so do a lot of other HBO series. Burns is giving me a bit of “get off my lawn” energy here. What do you make of it?

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