The Wire, the drama based around Baltimore's police, local government and media, still sits comfortably at the peak of all time television excellence.
It is, therefore, of great importance when its creator David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, comes out with something new.
That something, Show Me a Hero, began last Thursday on Sky's SoHo, and is a must-watch.
It begins what will be a stellar couple of months for the channel, which does cost extra, but just has no peer.
Next month, there will be new seasons of The Affair (starring the brilliant Dominic West, Detective Jimmy McNulty in The Wire), the fabulous Coen brothers' television re-imagining of the movie Fargo (this time with the incomparable Ted Danson), and the quietly excellent The Knick, which follows the lives of characters in an early 20th-century New York hospital.
Show Me a Hero began last Thursday, but repeats tomorrow at 8.30pm.
It features Oscar Isaac (he was great as the lead in the Coen brothers' folk music comedy-drama Inside Llewyn Davis) as Nick Wasicsko, the mayor of Yonkers, New York, from 1987 to 1989.
Wasicsko was in power during a time the white middle-class of the neighbourhood was resisting a federally-mandated public housing development in the suburb.
Simon has based the six-episode mini-series on a non-fiction book by former New York Times reporter Lisa Belkin.
The show deals with issues of segregation of racial and socio-economic groups in high-rise projects, and the reaction when the council was forced by the courts to change that.
Some quotes are reportedly taken verbatim from Belkin's news stories at the time, and with actors of the quality of Isaac, Bob Balaban, Jim Belushi and Winona Ryder, and such assured and competent storytelling, the result is something really special.
The Affair's first season looked at an extramarital affair between Noah Solloway (Dominic West) and Alison Bailey (Ruth Wilson, who is excellent).
The Affair uses the really clever plot device of splitting each episode into two, and showing events from the perspectives of both characters, with subtle and less subtle differences that show the unreliability of the narrators.
On top of that, both were being questioned about a death, and season one ended with Noah being arrested.
Season two will, without doubt, be brilliant.
The new season of Fargo moves back in time to 1979, and is set in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Luverne, Minnesota (a few hundred kilometres south of the city of Fargo).
The show will have to shine without the sterling performances of Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman, who made season one something special.
I'll put my money on Ted Danson to lift season two to those heights.
• Charles Loughrey
