If you watched The Wire, the odds are high that you were left wanting more of The Wire. While the popular series fairly miraculously enjoyed five seasons and the opportunity to wrap up most major arcs - not something all great TV shows enjoy - it is the rare fan who would turn down the opportunity to spend another couple of dozen hours in The Wire's sprawling portrayal of Baltimore society.
Well, turns out it was almost so. Members of the cast and creative team gathered for a reunion in New York earlier this week, and creator David Simon told Buzzfeed News there was a planned spin-off of the show.
"We were actually trying to spin off the city hall show and do a political show," he explained. “We wrote a bunch of scripts that would spin off after Season 3 of The Wire. But HBO said, 'No, we only want one show that nobody is watching in Baltimore, not two!'"
The planned series would have focused on politician Tommy Carcetti, played by Aidan Gillen.
It is not a big surprise that HBO turned down the series. The Wire was never a big ratings hit on TV, with many viewers only becoming fans thanks to DVD boxsets after the programme had ended its run. Nonetheless, Simon has since worked with HBO on Generation Kill, Treme and the upcoming Show Me a Hero.
Gillen, meanwhile, also continued to work with HBO thanks to his role on Game of Thrones. In fact, he has rarely been off our screens for very long, thanks to his performances in the likes of Love/Hate, The Dark Knight Rises and Calvary. And he still had the time to fill in for Tom Dunne!
