David Simon, Unspooling 'The Wire'

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David Simon was a reporter for The Baltimore Sun before becoming a television writer.

As HBO's The Wire comes to a close, creator and executive producer David Simon joins Fresh Air to talk about the show and his career.

The Wire is devoted to Baltimore's darker corners: corruption in the schools, corruption among the police, corruption among city officials, and now corruption among the scribes at The Baltimore Sun. Simon has written many of the episodes of The Wire, and some of the storylines come from his experience as a onetime police reporter for the Sun.

NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, also a former Sun reporter, calls the series "astonishingly sophisticated"; critic David Bianco of USA Today calls the show "one of the best series ever produced for American television, one in which the commitment to honesty and authenticity has never wavered."

(Others, including a former NPR arts editor who's been blogging about the show, say this season's Sun-centered storyline has dragged The Wire off the rails.)

Simon also wrote for Homicide: Life on the Street, a show based on his book of the same name. The Wire's season finale airs on March 9.