David Simon’s ‘We Own This City’ Is the Perfect Marriage of Material and Creator: TV Review
variety.comJoshua Alston Scripted limited-run dramas inspired by recent, buzzy true-crime tales have recently oversaturated the market.
And yet for as many as there are, notably few have drawn from what is arguably America’s most consequential (and most intractable) criminal justice phenomenon.
The problem of dysfunctional policing and its disproportionate impact on communities of color has been largely ignored by scripted television, save for occasional arcs on the fictional police dramas whose rose-tinted views of police work have contributed to that very issue. (The quality of such well-intentioned episodes generally ranges between “Not totally humiliating” and “May induce cringe spasms.”)The recent exception is “When They See Us,” Ava DuVernay’s gut-wrenching retelling of the Central Park Five case, which remains a potent example of how myopic and flawed police investigations can ruin lives.
That show drew its power from how relevant the issues it explored remain three decades since the real-life incident that inspired it. “When They See Us” was, nevertheless, a period piece that echoed contemporary cases, but lacked the punch of a story ripped from recent headlines.
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