Reddit reviews Show Me A Hero: A Tale of Murder, Suicide, Race, and Redemption
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Of these projects, I most enjoyed The Wire. But it's worth evaluating each of these projects in terms of what they were trying to accomplish, since they all had different goals.
This was adapted from Simon's book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, but I don't know how much Simon worked on the show day-to-day.
This show is much more of a crime procedural than any of the other works here. And with a few notable exceptions—e.g., Luther Mahoney or Brodie—the near-exclusive default point-of-view is that of the police.
The show was groundbreaking for network TV at the time. For one thing, at least one of the main-cast characters was a cop who was an asshole and basically corrupt. This show also demonstrated that the bosses and their subordinates do not always see eye-to-eye, and not just in the "crusty-but-benign" way described in the movie Network, either. Most cop shows at the time didn't just show cops, but they identified with the cops' perspective. (This is still pretty common today.) This is legitimate, but showing that cops have human foibles which have on-the-job repercussions was taking a chance, especially for a network show at that time. And, like The Wire, it got critical acclaim but relatively small (but devoted!) audiences.
The show's style was very different from that of, say, The Wire. For example, it had a non-diegetic score and camera moves that were more likely to draw attention to themselves. H:LotS also included collaborations with Baltimore native Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana. The latter went on to create HBO's Oz, and you can see plenty of influence there from Homicide.
H:LotS was also able to attract high-level talent throughout its run. Not only was the regular and recurring cast very strong (as you'd likely expect, even without having seen a single episode), but it attracted a number of actors best known for their film work. As just one example, Robin Williams appeared in the second season premiere, playing the husband of a crime victim. Steve Buscemi played an odious racist. Arguably, though, the most memorable guest appearance was Moses Gunn as Risley Tucker, the sole suspect in the homicide of 11-year old Adena Watson. Gunn may not be a household name, but he's been in projects from the original Shaft to Roots to stage performances.
Homicide was also remarkable, especially at the time, in that it shot on location in Baltimore. (For context, consider that Vancouver (almost) never plays itself; typically, a show at the time would be shot in New York or Los Angeles, even it it's set in another city.) It also helped establish some of the vocabulary familiar to those who've watched The Wire: "the box", "the board", etc.
This was a six-part miniseries for HBO based on David Simon's book about real-life addicts and dealers. If Homicide was primarily a show from the perspective of the cops, The Corner introduced what life was really like for those who lived in places like West Baltimore.
For me, Homicide was always more stylized in its aesthetic, but more traditional in the types of stories it tried to tell. It was groundbreaking relative to other cop shows, but it still chose the cops' vantage points as the default. The Corner inverted this.
A lot of the content from The Corner will be familiar to those who've already seen The Wire. (And, conversely, those who've seen The Corner would have some useful frame of reference for the events depicted in The Wire.) One attribute The Corner clearly focused on was authenticity. Homicide was a solid show, but The Corner felt real. Much of the cast of The Corner reappears in The Wire, too. And some of the real-life people whose lives Simon chronicled in his book played minor characters on The Wire. One of the most notable examples was the late DeAndre McCullough, who played Brother Mouzone's assistant Lamar.
Again: a killer cast. A good story, well-told. And, for a change-of-pace: even some Emmy nominations and wins!
I trust you're all familiar with this, right? :)
I think having laid some groundwork with the reporting which underlay Homicide and The Corner, The Wire had the basis to be incredibly ambitious. It told stories from the perspectives of cops and dealers and dope fiends and stevedores and City Hall and newspaper newsrooms. It also had a definite point-of-view, and it was unafraid to advocate for its argument, but by showing and not merely telling. Yes, it's about all the conflict between characters on all sides of the law. But it's also making some very important arguments: the drug war is unwinnable, and the consequences of that gratuitous futility are disastrous for countless people. Deindustrialization of big cities leaves the corner as the only employer in town. Actual reform that will have any kind of substantive effect will require something other than the standard bromides that have typically gotten politicians elected and re-elected. And so on.
This is a seven-part HBO miniseries based on the book Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Ice Man, Captain America, and the New Face of American War by Evan Wright, documenting those American Marines who were the tip-of-the-spear in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As with The Corner and The Wire, this goes out of its way to convey authenticity, especially in the context of the military jargon. Oh, and you get to see Baltimore native James Ransone, who played Ziggy, as a Marine, too.
This is Simon's love letter to the city of New Orleans, set in the immediate aftermath of Hurrican Katrina. Again: a killer cast, including everyone from Clarke Peters (who played Lester) to Khandi Alexander (who played Fran Boyd on The Corner) to New Orleans native Wendell Pierce (Bunk Moreland) to John Goodman (in damn-near EVERY movie) to Stephen Colbert's bandleader Jon Batiste (as himself).
For me, Treme was solid, but it was less compelling than The Wire. A lot of the goal of Treme was to show the importance and centrality of New Orleans to American culture, in everything from music to food. For me, that case seemed secondary to the lives of the characters themselves. Many of the themes from The Wire are familiar: indifferent institutions, crime and violence, etc. But it also has some ferociously good performances, amazing music performed live, and an important reminder that life for so many in New Orleans still wasn't really "after Katrina" yet, even years after the storm, because of just how much destruction was caused all around.
Oh, and like The Wire (among others), Treme cast a lot of local New Orleans natives who lived through the storm, as well as musicians who hadn't grown up with training as actors.
The title comes from an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote: "show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy". Like The Corner, this is another six-part HBO miniseries adapted from a nonfiction book. It's about a huge fight that the city of Yonkers, NY had with federal courts by resisting efforts to remedy housing segregation.
Some of the themes should be familiar: a stellar cast including Oscar Isaac, Winona Ryder (in a role I wouldn't have expected for her), Catherine Keener, Alfred Molina, and Clarke Peters (again). As you might have guessed from the quote, this story doesn't have a happy ending for everyone. The main theme is about how to do the right thing, especially as an elected official, in the face of violent opposition from much of the city, and what cost doing the right thing will entail.
This is a forthcoming David Simon series about the world around Times Square in the 1970s: pornography, just as it was becoming legalized, HIV/AIDS, drug use, and the economic conditions of the city at the time. Even if the whole team totally dropped the ball here, I'm sure this will be better than HBO's 1970s music drama Vinyl, at a minimum.
The cast includes James Franco (playing twins), Maggie Gyllenhaal, Anwan Glover (Slim Charles), Lawrence Gilliard, Jr. (D'Angelo Barksdale), Chris Bauer (Frank Sobotka), and Gbenga Akinnagbe (Chris Partlow). Oh, and the pilot is being directed by Michelle MacLaren, whose directing credits include Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Westworld, among others.