5 Things A Sixth Season Of The Wire Could've Focused On

3. The Prison System

Though one of series' core messages is that the 'game' never changes, with players on both sides of the fence constantly replacing each other and repeating past actions, many characters were indeed brought to justice and placed under the care of the Maryland prison system during the course of proceedings. Indeed, both Avon Barksdale and his nephew D'Angelo are shown in an imprisoned state throughout the course of the second season, whilst Wee-Bay Brice and Chris Partlow, enforcers for their respective organisations, were shown greeting each other in a cordial fashion at the end of the fifth.

At no point were the intricacies of the American prison system analysed in detail, however. Other shows, such as Prison Break HBO's dedicated prison drama, Oz, have gone more in depth, but you have to feel that series' creator David Simon and his writers would've delivered a much more scathing commentary on the broken nature of the prison system, particularly given the controversies about how black and hispanic men are much more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts.

A lengthier focus on somebody's sentence, potentially that of Wee-Bay and Chris as they attempt to rule over the inmates, is something of a missed opportunity for the series, which would've had no hesitation in showing the brutal reality of life behind bars in the USA.