It sounds like heresy, admittedly, but stick with it. You might just learn something, and get to watch a pretty great hour of television as well. Whilst the role of Stringer Bell in the first few seasons of David Simon's peerless HBO crime drama The Wire is the place that Idris Elba got his face, name and uncannily accurate America accent to a wider audience, it actually happened a little before that. Already dividing time between the US and the UK, in 2001 playing the part of Achilles in a stage production of Troilus And Cressida in New York, Elba did what any up-and-coming performer did: he auditioned for Law & Order, a staple of American airwaves for two decades, where countless stars have made early appearances. Elba appeared in the 2001 episode 3 Dawg Night as a witness in the case a hip-hop star allegedly murdering a nightclub patron who accused him of being a sell out. The episode was loosely based on a similar incident involving a shooting at a club and Sean P Diddy Combs a few years prior, and it was Elba's performance that put him on the radar of the people behind The Wire.
