David Simon has created some of the most distinctive and critically acclaimed television shows of the 21st century. The former reporter has produced three full series and five miniseries, all for HBO, and all taking a realistic and journalistic approach to issues facing America. None of Simon's series are bad, but some of them are more dramatically successful than others.
Simon worked as a crime reporter for The Baltimore Sun for 13 years, including writing the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. The book was adapted into a critically acclaimed NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street, with Simon becoming a writer and executive producer on the show. This led David Simon to begin creating his own shows, beginning with The Corner, also based on a journalistic book written by Simon and Ed Burns. While Simon's shows often take a while to be recognized and receive little awards attention, they have attracted critical praise, especially dark police drama The Wire, which has often been suggested in discussions regarding what the best TV show ever is.
While David Simon is often identified as the primary author of these series, he shares credit with a reliable group of collaborators including Burns, crime novelist George Pelecanos, and TV writers Eric Overmyer and William F. Zorzi. The following list includes all eight David Simon TV shows that see him credited as a creator and/or showrunner, which excludes Homicide but includes all of his work since, from worst to best.
We Own This City
Simon's most recent series, We Own This City is based on the true story of Baltimore's corrupt Gun Trace Task Force. The six-episode miniseries was hailed as David Simon's return to Baltimore, offering an even more pessimistic perspective than The Wire on the city's police culture. Jon Bernthal gives a dynamic lead performance as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins. However, We Own This City's cutting between multiple time frames is often needlessly confusing, and at times the series falls prey to Simon's most didactic impulses, feeling like more of a lecture than a compelling drama. Still, even at their worst Simon's series are worth watching, and We Own This City is a powerful commentary on America's broken police culture.
Generation Kill
The 2008 miniseries Generation Kill, created by David Simon and Ed Burns, focuses on a battalion of young soldiers during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Drawing on the work of a real embedded reporter, Simon reveals the US military to be every bit as dysfunctional an institution as the police and other American organizations he has chronicled. The series cast includes Alexader Skarsgard and James Ransome, who played Ziggy in The Wire's divisive season 2. Generation Kill is another Simon series that gets a little too preachy and doesn't have as memorable characters as some of his other shows, putting it towards the lower end of the David Simon TV show roster.
Treme
As Simon's first full series after The Wire, Treme was seen as a disappointment by many viewers expecting another gritty crime series. However, taken on its own terms Treme is a very enjoyable series that takes a multifaceted and often digressive approach to capturing the city of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Treme featured an ensemble cast including heavy hitters such as John Goodman, Melissa Leo, Kim Dickens, and Khandi Alexander, as well as The Wire veterans including Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters. Treme also featured diverse musical performances from a number of legendary New Orleans artists.
The Corner
The first series David Simon created was the six-part miniseries The Corner. The series centers on drug addict Gary McCullough and his family, and includes documentary-style interviews with the real people the characters are based on. The Corner is easy to see as mainly a dry run for The Wire, but is still worth watching in its own right for its harrowing depiction of drug addiction and poverty in Baltimore.
The Plot Against America
The 2020 miniseries The Plot Against America is Simon's furthest departure from reality, offering an alternate history where Nazi-sympathizing aviator Charles Lindbergh wins the presidency from Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. The series was interpreted by many as a commentary on the presidency of Donald Trump. Rather than simply being a Saturday Night Live-style swipe at Trump, however, The Plot Against America is a nuanced depiction of the ways in which different people respond to rising authoritarianism and bigotry. John Turturro's portrayal of an opportunistic rabbi who is in denial about Lindbergh's anti-Semitic policies is a particular stand-out performance.
Show Me A Hero
The best David Simon TV show miniseries has to be Show Me A Hero, which chronicles a battle over public housing in Yonkers, New York that became fraught with race and class tensions. The series takes a seemingly dull political issue and creates real human drama out of it, showing how individual lives are affected by America's faltering efforts to undo generations of segregation. Actor Oscar Isaac gives a career-best performance as tormented Mayor Nick Wasicsko.
The Deuce
Spanning a decade-long period, The Deuce is a broad look at how sex work changed due to the popularization of pornography, and the effect that this had on New York during one of its most notorious periods. The series provides a rare nuanced and multifaceted look at sex work and the porn industry, while also portraying broader shifts in American capitalism during the 1970s and 80s. While some viewers may be wary of James Franco in a lead role, The Deuce really features more of an ensemble cast, including a fantastic performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal as street sex worker turned porn director Candy. The Deuce is Simon and his collaborators at their most mature and confident.
The Wire
Despite many years having passed since its inception, American crime drama The Wire is still commonly regarded as the best David Simon TV show, and not undeservingly. Beginning as the story of Baltimore police trying to take down a drug ring, The Wire became a sprawling picture of a failing American city and its dysfunctional institutions. Drawing parallels between the police, drug gangs, declining industry, local politics, and schools, The Wire was like nothing else that came before it. It also drew on an underutilized pool of Black actors to create iconic characters, including breakout roles for major stars like Idris Elba and Michael B. Jordan.
While it took a while to gain a following, The Wire was eventually recognized as one of the greatest TV series of all time. To an extent, David Simon and his collaborators have lived in its shadow since then. What really separates The Wire from the work Simon and company did after it is how entertaining the series is, featuring colorful characters like Michael K. Williams' Omar and plenty of laugh-out-loud comedic moments while still delivering a nuanced critique of American institutional failure. While almost every David Simon TV show has those who rightly praise it, the legacy of The Wire is set to be seemingly the most long-lasting.