Wire creator examines Iraq war with Generation Kill

Published at 2:03 PM on June 18, 2008

By Henry Freedland

photo by Evan Wright

Some advice for all those who were worried: After the five-season inner-city chronicle of Baltimore that was HBO's The Wire, show mastermind David Simon will not be abandoning his writing-producing leanings any time soon. So stop complaining about how the best show on TV is gone forever. Renew your cable subscription. Get ready for more gritty journalistic truths.

Simon's new project, Generation Kill, is a seven-part miniseries based on the experiences of the First Recon Battalion (also ominously referred to as the First Suicide Battalion), during the first 40 days of the Iraq War. Set to air July 13 on HBO, all signs point to the show being as obsessively faithful to the experience of these soldiers in Iraq as The Wire reportedly was to each segment of Baltimore's population that it featured.

Just how realistic is it? The script is closely adapted from a first-hand account of the same name written by journalist Evan Wright, who was embedded with the unit during that time period. Sgt. Erik Kocher and Cpl. Jeffrey Carisalez worked as consultants for the show.

And one character, Sgt. Rudy Reyes, will be played by himself in the series. "They don't need to dramatize nothing," Reyes insists. "There's nothing more dramatic going on than a unit of recon Marines with no close air support or armor running and gunning into insurgents that are holed up in towns and fighting to the death."

Watch the trailer: