In what I assume are promotional pieces for HBO's The Wire, we have moments from the past of a handful of characters Proposition Joe and Omar as children and the first meeting of Bunk and McNulty. I knew these films existed and one of them was on YouTube but I never bothered to seek them out until the end of the final season had me jonesing badly over the loss of my show. So I went on Google to try and find them and was only slightly embarrassed to learn that they have been freely available on the HBO website and not the "hard to find nuggets" I thought they were.
The short films themselves see Prop Joe making deals as a child, Omar showing his morals as a kid on the streets and Bunk and McNulty finding a shared interest in their first night shift together but they do not offer much apart from being curio pieces for the fans and perhaps some promotional use for the series when it was on. As pieces of background they are limited; for Omar and Joe I didn't really buy the specific events or their importance. It didn't help that they weren't acted that well and felt a bit clunky, with the child actors being directed to do more of an impression than a performance. The Bulk/McNulty one is of more value as it has the proper actors in it but other than being a comedy moment it doesn't offer much.
Curiosity pieces then that aren't actually that good worth a glance for die-hard fans but, unlike the series proper, they are nothing to get excited about.
