As America went into coronavirus lockdown in March, HBO reported a surge in viewership for a number of its programs, including The Wire, David Simon’s riveting chronicle of drug slingers, cops, politicians, and folks just trying to get by in Baltimore. The show, which turns 18 in June, is now in the enviable position of having tripled its usual audience. Apparently, quarantine has allowed many folks to finally watch—or rewatch—the series, which routinely shows up on lists of the greatest TV shows of all time.

Last week, I spoke to creator David Simon about both The Wire and The Plot Against America, a new limited series from Simon and co-creator Ed Burns. What follows is an edited version of our conversation about two dramas that examine the uses and abuses of power.

Are more people reaching out to you about The Wire right now?

Yeah. There seems to be a little bit of [that]...I’m happy it’s had the shelf life it’s had. I’m a little bit amused at the contrariness of the fact that I have a miniseries running now [The Plot Against America] that I spent the last three years working on. So the idea that that thing’s in its first run—and people are watching The Wire now, or talking about watching The Wire now—is a little bit contrary. I have to laugh at that. I mean, five years from now or 10 years from now, they’ll be looking at The Plot Against America. If I’m still making TV then, they won’t be watching what I’m putting on the air then. That’s the standard vibe I have, which is, nobody watches the stuff when it’s actually broadcast.

Well, the work that you and your collaborators do certainly has staying power.

I think TV’s become [about] that in a sense, because of streaming and downloads, and even the generation before with DVDs, to some extent. It’s become a lending library. People are finding Treme now, people are finding The Deuce. Those shows are long gone as well. I feel like if you can get it on the shelf, it’s pretty much like a book—it will be found by the people who are looking for that book, or something like it.

Have the things that people bring up to you when they talk about The Wire changed a lot over time?

Not really. People seem to respond to the same things. They’re acquiring it at different moments in their lives. I’d say the thing [that’s different is] people are not experiencing it while it’s being broadcast, they’re basically binge-watching it on their own terms. So there’s a lot less of the, “Oh, I hated season two; there were too many white people. Oh, I hated season five.”

[When it was on,] these things were debated on a weekly basis without anybody being able to stand back and look at the whole. To us, it was always a whole. Yeah, there were separate seasons and they each had a theme, but it was structured as a whole, as 60 hours. Now it’s being experienced as that…. They may like it, they may not like it, but at least they’re taking it as the whole meal. That’s probably a little bit better.

It’s not that TV had never been serialized before, but around that time, there was a new approach in the sophistication of serialized drama. The Wire helped people get familiar with an approach to storytelling that we are now much more used to.

When we tried that, we knew it was different and we knew there was some fundamental risk, because what if [viewers] miss two weeks and they’re lost? You’re carrying so much story forward, and TV’s not really made for everybody catching every hour. We basically threw out [the dominant model] and said, “Nah, let’s just write a book. Let’s write the best possible story we can and let’s treat these things as chapters.”

We did it only on the strength of HBO showing episodes four or five times a week on the regular broadcast platform. When we did it, we weren’t thinking about the DVD market for television, which really was not a gleam in anybody’s eye at that point. In fact, they didn’t come out with the DVDs for seasons one and two of The Wire until season three was being broadcast.

I’d forgotten that.

We didn’t anticipate DVDs, and of course we didn’t conceive of streaming. We were actually launching it into a world that wasn’t yet ready for the presumption of what we were doing. But the world got there, and got there fast.

At the time we felt like we were sort of sticking our necks out a little bit, but that doesn’t count to anybody picking it up now. Who gives a shit? Now it’s just a story. And it’s fine. I’m glad the TV universe changed, because that’s all I know how to do. I haven’t worked on an episodic show since Homicide, and I probably won’t work on one again.

When it comes to the kinds of structural critiques of capitalism the show engaged in, when it comes to the ideas The Wire explored, do you feel like the dialogue around those issues has evolved since it premiered?

I think we did some damage to the drug war. I think there were a lot of people critiquing the drug war in a lot of different mediums, and rightly so. I’m not suggesting The Wire is in any way paramount among those, but we did kick in our share of early and dramatic arguments against the drug prohibition, and what it’s done to inner-city neighborhoods and to racial inequality—the things that the drug war was destroying and continues to destroy. Did we make a dent in unrelenting and brutalizing capitalism? No. We knew why we were writing certain seasons and we knew why they were necessary. The vast majority of viewers will argue that season two was much less fun, because it was much less “cops and robbers.” It was more about the death of work, and what was happening with automation and the decline of the working class, and the loss of union collective bargaining power. But there are a lot of people who experience it as, “I want to see some more bang-bang. Give me more Omar. Give me some more ‘Barksdale versus the world.’” I get that. We were trading in that. We knew we had to make the story entertaining. But our reasons for doing it were so that we could sustain a sociopolitical argument. That was why we got up in the morning.

Did the world get better? You’re absolutely right to say we seem to be struggling with a lot of the same things and not making much progress. I didn’t anticipate the complete collapse of mainstream media as fast as we’ve seen it happen and the absolute disappearance of [that] revenue stream. [Media companies] were listening to Wall Street. They weren’t thinking about the existential meaning of journalism.

I’m glad we ended on that note, but for people [whose reaction was], “Ah, I don’t give a fuck about the reporters. Couldn’t we have had a big gunfight with Omar and Marlo?” It’s like, I know what we were selling and I know we had to deliver on some of that, but at the end of the day, I’m more proud of the fact that we were arguing with the world.

From things you’ve said over the years, it sounds like you are grateful for the show’s continued resonance, but it’s also clear that there are reactions to The Wire that make you think that some people missed the point.

Well, always. You win some, you lose some. Every now and then, I get drawn into critiquing one of these [reactions] and it’s never good…. One time somebody said to me—they were discussing which of the four kids in season four should have had a better future, and they were like, “No, Namond was a snitch. He should have been got.” I actually violated my [own policy]. I said, “Namond was a fucking 15-year-old kid. Fuck you.” He was a 15-year-old. He was 14 when we met him, and he was 15 when we left him, and you think he has to be “got.” I’ve got nothing for you.

It’s interesting that TV has evolved to deliver each story as a whole. And ideally, a TV story with something to say can continue to gain relevance.

Right. Our numbers for broadcast night on The Plot Against America are about half a million. Not notable in any way, but weeks later, the first episode has now been seen by 3.5 million people. That number will continue to grow. There are people who are waiting for all six to be out, so they can binge it in one night. It’s not about the Nielsen ratings anymore. There’s some other measure by which we survive.

In The Plot Against America, Herman Levin keeps saying things like, “This is America. This is a democracy. I have rights.” Do you think that right now, today, we live in a democracy?

No. I think we live in a democracy that is being undercut. By the way, we’ve always lived in a republic, and there is a distinct difference. But I think even our basic democratic norms that exist within our republican form of governance are being demolished with a rapidity that is startling.

There’s something that my father used to say every Passover. He may have lifted it from somewhere, but he said it every year. He said that “freedom is something that can never be completely won.” There’s never a moment where it’s not under threat. There’s never a moment where it’s perfectly achieved. There’s never a moment where it’s extended to all the people who require and demand that freedom. It’s never a completed project.

This generation of Americans has now found out how fragile our form of governance actually is, how it relies on people to observe the law and to hold the law in regard and to share in a belief in certain norms and institutions that are above the political sphere. Fewer and fewer people now credit that idea. I think this is a terrifying moment. I’m very proud of Plot for basically making this argument.

Looking at the images of folks being forced to go to the ballot box in Wisconsin recently, and then seeing some of the final images in the last episode of Plot…I don’t want to give anything away, but that finale also dwells on how democracy works—or doesn’t.

I don’t think an election in my lifetime has ever mattered more [than the 2020 election]. I say that without confidence in our ability to run an election and achieve the popular will. I think our basic electoral processes are under siege right now.

That doesn’t absolve me from trying and from being committed. Obviously, [longtime Simon collaborator] Ed Burns and I and everybody else involved in Plot were trying to figure out a way to speak to the current moment. I would have felt like we had failed if we didn’t get something on the air that spoke to exactly this. But I’m scared. I’m very scared.

One of the things Plot depicts so well is the normalization of fascism and repression. In real life, even if the popular will is achieved and the popular will is to have a new president, why does anyone think that the current resident of the White House will go quietly?

Right. [Philip] Roth has a couple of great sentences in the book where he says, “It’s the unimagined that comes to get you.” It’s the presumption that this relatively young form of self-governance is rock solid and that people will only tolerate so much that underlies so much tragedy. [Democracy] requires a daily will on the part of the vast majority of citizens. It requires citizens. Going back to the Athenian model, it requires the citizenry to assert for its own status.

My feeling is, right now, we need all the citizens we can get. We need all the Herman Levins in the world. As flawed as he is, and as given to rage and impulse as he is, he’s not wrong. You either fight now, or there will be nothing to fight over.

Speaking of an idea that comes up in Plot, have you ever thought about going to Canada?

No. No, no. Listen, you can’t even get me out of Baltimore.