Kmflett's Blog

The Wire, The Baltimore Bridge & Frank Sobotka

It is 17 years- March 9 2008- since the last episode of The Wire aired on US television and 16 years since it started airing on the BBC

The programme, set in the US city of Baltimore, ran to some sixty shows over five series.

Created by David Simon is it perhaps best known in the UK-where it aired on BBC2 from 2009- for introducing the actor Dominic West to public attention as the police officer McNulty but there are a string of other memorable performances often by black actors such as Idris Elba who have also since gone on to become very well known.

The programme is a snapshot of everyday life in a predominantly working class US city.

The title refers to the ability of the police to tap in to and record the conversations of the criminally inclined- often drug dealers-and to secure their conviction.

The five series cover a range of subjects. The first looks at police and drug dealers. The second at the port of Baltimore and workers organisation. The third returns to drugs but looks also at politicians and the legal process. The fourth looks at education and the fifth at the media.

The second series on the waterfront contains probably the only sustained TV treatment- and a sympathetic  one-of trade union organisation ,the fictional International Brotherhood of Stevedores. It also includes what must be the only scenes ever shown on mainstream TV of routine life in a branch trade union office. The union branch secretary Frank Sobotka has to bend rules to keep his union going in a declining industry and ends up murdered. His son Ziggy Sobotka was played by James Ransone who has sadly died at 46

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/21/james-ransone-the-wire-actor-dead?CMP=share_btn_url

Ziggy Sobotka was a counterweight to his father Frank, the hard pressed and ultimately corrupt union official

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggy_Sobotka

David Simon had been a reporter on the Baltimore Sun and he was at pains to underline that all the themes of The Wire- drugs, gangs, political corruption- were based on stories that had actually happened.

The tragic collapse of the Baltimore Bridge in 2024 after it was hit by a ship was a reminder of a scene from the Wire where Sobotka meeting his son notes that the bridge and his union would last forever. However as Marx noted, all that is solid melts into air