HBO’s The Wire aired its series finale on March 9, 2008, and the 18 years since have done nothing to diminish its standing. David Simon and Ed Burns built the show around the city of Baltimore, analyzing everything from the drug trade to city hall to build an indictment of American urban decay that no other TV show has replicated. To be fair, the series averaged fewer than four million viewers at its peak, a fraction of what The Sopranos drew in the same era. Yet its reputation has only grown in the years since it ended, with The Wire now being widely considered one of the best shows HBO has ever produced. Even though there’s nothing like The Wire on television, Netflix’s Nemesis is a new crime drama that hits some of the same marks as HBO’s masterpiece.
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Nemesis is co-creator Courtney A. Kemp’s debut collaboration with Netflix following her years running the Power universe at Starz. Created by Kemp and Tani Marole, the show revolves around two men in Los Angeles locked in a years-long pursuit of one another. Coltrane Wilder (Y’lan Noel) is a criminal who has built a public identity as a reformed businessman to conceal the scope of his operation, while Isaiah Stiles (Matthew Law) is an LAPD detective whose fixation on bringing Coltrane down has quietly gutted his marriage and family life in the process. The series debuted on May 14th, currently holds a 92% critics’ approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and climbed to third on Netflix’s Global TV chart within a week of its release. While Nemesis is widely compared to Michael Mann’s Heat, the crime drama is also deeply connected to The Wire.
Nemesis Reunites Many The Wire Actors
When casting Nemesis, creators Kemp and Marole prioritized actors who had previous experience in complex crime narratives, which leads to a surprising overlap with the cast of The Wire. For instance, the Netflix production stars Domenick Lombardozzi as Dave Cerullo, a seasoned cop within the Los Angeles Police Department. Lombardozzi spent five seasons in The Wire portraying the bluntly aggressive detective Thomas “Herc” Hauk, who showed how standard police brutality and intellectual laziness actively harmed investigations. Furthermore, Nemesis introduces Michael Potts as James Sealey, a police chief who acts as a mentor figure to the lead investigator. In The Wire, Potts played Brother Mouzone, a disciplined enforcer at the edges of the Barksdale organization whose strict personal code and deliberate calm made him a fan-favorite character.
Nemesis cast continues to draw from the HBO series with the inclusion of Deputy Chief Fred Holmes (Chris Bauer), the senior officer overseeing Sealey’s department. Bauer previously portrayed Frank Sobotka, a union treasurer who compromised his morals to sustain the Baltimore docks in The Wire. Furthermore, Manny Shaw (Tristan Wilds) is introduced as Stiles’ deceased partner, whose unsolved death drives the detective’s obsession. Wilds spent three seasons on The Wire playing Michael Lee, a middle school student groomed into an enforcer for the Stanfield drug organization.
Beyond the police precinct, Nemesis populates its cast with even more familiar faces from The Wire. Michael Hyatt portrays a family counselor attempting to mediate Stiles’ deteriorating marriage, a significant departure from her tenure as Brianna Barksdale, the strategist who managed the Barksdale family’s illicit finances. Additionally, Maestro Harrell guest stars in the fifth episode of Nemesis as a street thief attempting to rob a rival crew. Harrell previously portrayed Randy Wagstaff, a foster child systematically failed by Baltimore’s social institutions.
While Nemesis and The Wire are quite different, each featuring a specific approach to storytelling, it’s curious to see how they share a significant part of their cast. It’s also unsurprising that with so many talented people working in front of the screen, both shows managed to charm critics and stand out as successful crime dramas.
All eight episodes of Nemesis are currently available on Netflix, while The Wire is available to binge on HBO Max.
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