Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

We Own This City - new David Simon cop drama

Watched the first episode last night. It looks very good, although a) the ears take time to re-learn the Baltimore lingo and b) as is always the case the pace and the rapid cutting between different parts of the story takes some effort on the viewers part.

Highly enjoyable to see some of the actors from The Wire pop up in different roles.
 
I've seen the first three, tried to watch more last night but j'etais fatigue
stavros said:
Interesting. I've just finished rewatching The Wire, and I recognise the names of Marlo and Herc in that cast list
Click to expand...
Theres loads of the younguns from the wire in this. Its good so far. I find Jon Bernthal dislikable in everything I've seen him in but that fits here anyway.
 
I gave up The Wire after the first episode.

I saw the first episode of this the other day and feel no need to see any more. Didn’t realise it was by the same guy. He must think that people enjoy watching tedious police procedurals and that they give two fucks about his tedious police and criminal characters.
 
  • Sad
Reactions: Ax^
platinumsage said:
I gave up The Wire after the first episode.

I saw the first episode of this the other day and feel no need to see any more. Didn’t realise it was by the same guy. He must think that people enjoy watching tedious police procedurals and that they give two fucks about his tedious police and criminal characters.
Click to expand...

That’s lovely but this thread isn’t about The Wire :)
 
I bloody LOVED this (just watched it this weekend), and instantly found it right up my street. Actually started to get melancholic through episode 3 that there were only 3 more episodes remaining, I wished it would run and run (Wire style!).

I actually stopped midway through episode 2 and re-watched from the beginning (of ep1) as I didn't clock all of the (to be fair, telegraphed, but still confusing to me! Wait, so I have to pay attention now to the Interview CCTV timestamps?!) time switches.

Wolf of Wall Street is my fairly Alpha Male guilty pleasure, so I love Jon Bernthal in pretty much everything :oops:

Not sure on all the reusing of the Wire characters. Whilst it didn't necessarily detract, it just felt a bit pointless? It's not like they were uniquely qualified to carry the specific characters they replaced, and even the young detective guy was a bit 'meh'.

To declare my Wire credentials, I only watched it last year - thought it was very good, but not nearly as essential as people made out it to be. As it goes, this was much more like the Oscar Isaac 6 parter 'Show Me A Hero'.
 
platinumsage said:
I gave up The Wire after the first episode.

I saw the first episode of this the other day and feel no need to see any more. Didn’t realise it was by the same guy. He must think that people enjoy watching tedious police procedurals and that they give two fucks about his tedious police and criminal characters.
Click to expand...
Aye, silly David Simon, failing to realise that no-one is interested in watching The Wire. :facepalm:

Anyway, the true story behind this one is fascinating, when I first heard about there was a part of me thinking "huh, Simon really did let the cops off too easily in the Wire" so glad to see him adapting it - looking it up, I see that this one is based on a book of the same name anyway, there's actually two books on the same task force, I had been meaning to add I Got A Monster to my to-read list for a while:
www.igotamonster.com

I Got a Monster documentary out now

www.igotamonster.com www.igotamonster.com

Although looking around for reviews that compare the two, most of them seem to say that We Own... is the slightly stronger book overall?
 
platinumsage said:
I gave up The Wire after the first episode.

I saw the first episode of this the other day and feel no need to see any more. Didn’t realise it was by the same guy. He must think that people enjoy watching tedious police procedurals and that they give two fucks about his tedious police and criminal characters.
Click to expand...
I think you have to prepared to put in a bit of work with The Wire. As such, maybe it’s not for everyone. But it’s so, so worth it.
 
Watched the first two episodes this afternoon. Seems pretty good.

And Lake Trout gets a mention in the first episode too!
 
beesonthewhatnow said:
I think you have to prepared to put in a bit of work with The Wire. As such, maybe it’s not for everyone. But it’s so, so worth it.
Click to expand...

The nice thing about it is where most series take a while to get going because they spoon-feed you drips of plot and build up steam the wire takes a bit to get going because it throws you in the deep end and laughs as you struggle to swim.
 
Finished it now, it's pretty good - maybe not as good as the Wire, but then the Wire had longer to build up, and also the advantage that you genuinely didn't know what was going to happen, whereas with this one you definitely did know what was going to happen in the end. Also, all them defence lawyers sat in the interviews really didn't seem to be doing much, did they?
 
I watched the series in three sittings, then felt disappointed there weren’t more episodes.
But it works, tells an excellent tale about real events in the Baltimore Police Department.
I will be watching it all again soon.
 
Jeff Robinson said:
Opening credits are top notch too!

Click to expand...

That was one of the things I felt genuinely unsure about actually - I've not looked into it, but I kind of assumed the opening credits were all footage of real events rather than being filmed specially for the show (could be wrong, that's how it felt to me though). Which is fine, but then my assumption's right then is that an actual dead body being used in there? That kind of felt like it crossed a line for me. If I'm right, I could well be wrong though?
 
hitmouse said:
Finished it now, it's pretty good - maybe not as good as the Wire, but then the Wire had longer to build up, and also the advantage that you genuinely didn't know what was going to happen, whereas with this one you definitely did know what was going to happen in the end. Also, all them defence lawyers sat in the interviews really didn't seem to be doing much, did they?
Click to expand...

I found it a bit frustrating precisely for that reason. You already knew what was going to happen. I also felt one or two of the characters weren’t brilliantly fleshed out. Still, very ‘enjoyable’ and a cut above but certainly not The Wire.
 
Been listening to a BBC Sounds podcast on this well, the real story behind WOTC)...Tbh it's not great as a standalone compelling narrative, but very worth listening to if you're a WOTC fan. If nothing else, it really brings home that these people were real, and tbh doesn't shine any more light on the actual story, which in itself actually shows how great the TV show is to not only be entertaining, but almost documentary-like in retelling what actually happened in the perfect level of detail and accuracy. :cool:

*Had a few BBC podcasts like that - really lightweight in information, 8 episodes of 30 minutes, where probably 8 minutes is lost each episode going over a summary of what happened last week , and previewing/building up the next episode (which is never the bombshell its been introduced as for the last 3 eps)- which is really grating if you watch them b2b. This one felt like a media studies student was given an assignment to create a factual documentary series using only WOTC as source material.

There was one on the Royal Mail IT shittery, and it was so light on a topic I was dying to find out more about, I was really quite cross! Dear Points of View, Why oh why oh why... :p

But I digress...

Link is here BBC Sounds - Bad Cops - Available Episodes as you'll be rushing to after that recommendation! :thumbs:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

seeformiles
RIP David Soul
2
Replies
30
Views
1K
QueenOfGoths
QueenOfGoths
JimW
David Attenborough's time will never be up
Replies
14
Views
512
Raheem
Raheem
Badgers
We Own This City - David Simon / HBO
Replies
3
Views
397
krtek a houby
krtek a houby
seeformiles
RIP David McCallum
Replies
23
Views
641
Sasaferrato
Sasaferrato
platinumsage
The Reckoning - BBC Savile drama
2 3
Replies
62
Views
3K
Kid_Eternity
Kid_Eternity
Back
Top Bottom