It is inevitable that We Own This City (Sky Atlantic) will be compared to The Wire. Developed by David Simon and George Pelecanos, starring several actors who also appeared in The Wire and also set in Baltimore, it is deeply immersed in the same world, and takes a similar stylistic approach. Anyone expecting to have their hand held as they are walked through this multi-faceted story may be disappointed. Instead, this six-parter is a sinewy true story of police corruption that drops you right into the thick of the action. If this is a spiritual heir to The Wire, then it’s good to be back. No doubt, no doubt.
Who owns this city? Is it the cops or the criminals? Or is the line so scuffed and faded it is no longer possible to tell? Adapted from the nonfiction book of the same name by Justin Fenton, We Own This City begins in 2017, nearly two years after the death in custody of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, and the acquittal of, or dropped charges against, the six police officers involved. Baltimore is “a poster child for the basic failure to stop lawlessness”, and a vast network of angles on what exactly has gone wrong with policing there takes in the FBI, Department of Justice, elected politicians and law enforcement officers from a number of regions.
In the controversial podcast The Trojan Horse Affair, the reporters talk jokily about the need for a “murder wall” to keep track of their investigation – that TV-trope pinboard with photographs and notes linked by red string. After the first episode, I wondered if I should start one, to keep track of who’s who and what they have to do with it all. Still, complexity is to be expected from Simon and Pelecanos, and as a viewer I would rather be trusted to connect the dots than be marched patiently from department to department with reminders of who everyone is at all times.
This is a cop’s-eye view of Baltimore. It opens with a “run sheet” logging the activity of Sgt Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal) of the Gun Trace Task Force. (If kicking off your series with a procedural document filling the screen isn’t a sign of confidence, then I don’t know what is.) Jenkins delivers a bullish speech to new officers, appearing to warn them against police brutality, arguing that “it only gets in the way of you doing the job”.
What Jenkins considers the job to be only becomes plain in slow motion, but by the end of this first episode, it is clear that he isn’t some friendly bobby on the beat. Bernthal is fantastic as the swaggering Jenkins, puffed up, self-important and turned on by the power he wields. “Can’t fuck with superman,” he boasts. He likes to be down in the dirt, storming drug dens and throwing his weight around. These raid scenes are undeniably thrilling and strong on detail: guns under the sofa cushion, a toy truck on the stairs. It never labours the point, but is incredibly effective.
Post-Freddie Gray, policing is in disarray. Wunmi Mosaku is Nicole Steele, a civil rights lawyer who will find her way to Jenkins’ task force. In a neat demonstration of what is happening in the city, Steele films a crowd who are all filming an arrest on their phones; eventually the officers walk away, telling the street to “police yourselves”. There are 24 still-serving officers who can no longer testify in court because they have committed perjury on the stand. And there is one notorious officer, Hersl, held up as “a prime example of what’s gone wrong in Baltimore”. Hersl (The Good Wife’s Josh Charles) is racist, violent, vindictive – and still employed. “Everybody’s so fuckin’ sensitive,” he spits.
These many layers begin to knot themselves together after a series of drug deaths. Strong heroin has “dropped a dozen people” and all appears to be coming from the same source. “We’re not going to make a dent in this shit, are we?” says the cynical Officer McDougall, knowing they are engaged in a futile exercise. But when the police track the suspected heroin dealer, they find another tracker fixed to his car, next to their own. The tables turn, and quickly.
During an FBI interview in the near future, a man named Momodu Gondo, or G-Money, explains that information is the key to unlocking everything in Baltimore. What matters is “who got it, who gets it” he says. We Own This City throws a lot of information out there, from acronyms to procedural terms to shifting timelines, via a web of loosely connected characters. But this horrifying story will more than reward you, once you tune in to its beat.
