We Own This City

After finishing Dark Waters I wanted to dive into another docudrama, and all the stories of ICE agents attacking civilians reminded me of this gem. I was super excited that David Simon (The Wire) was returning to the police in Baltimore back when it first came out, but have not rewatched it since then.

We Own This City has a similar feeling to The Wire, but does not match The Wire’s all-time greatness. It’s still a good show, but the writers seemed to struggle a bit with the docudrama format. Basing the show on true events makes the show inherently more interesting, but the writers created a fake character of Nicole Steele to be able to expound on overall themes. This is a huge tell-don’t-show element, and the Nicole Steele scenes often are the lower point of the miniseries.

The acting and the majority of the story are excellent, and the underlying facts are unfortunately not as shocking as they should be. It’s great that the writers brought such a huge story of police corruption into the public eye in a way that traditional news failed so spectacularly, as I had not really heard of these events prior to seeing this show.

Overall, We Own This City is great. It gets an 8/10.