Jon Bernthal's Acclaimed 93% Crime Series Is Streaming On HBO Max Now

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Jon Bernthal as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins in We Own This City (2022)

Published Aug 23, 2026, 5:24 PM EDT

Growing up around performers, storytelling was always central to Emma's life. Add in a nerdy older brother who introduced her to Marvel at far too young an age, and her love for entertainment led her to pursue a Journalism degree at Indiana University, where she discovered her passion for entertainment reporting. She spent nearly one year in Los Angeles covering industry stories and fully immersing herself in the world of entertainment media.

Jon Bernthal has become one of television’s most recognizable crime drama stars. After breaking out as Shane Walsh in The Walking Dead, the actor went on to play Frank Castle in The Punisher and earn an Emmy for his performance as Mikey Berzatto in The Bear. But one of Bernthal’s most acclaimed leading performances came in a gritty six-episode crime miniseries that reunited several of the people behind one of HBO’s most celebrated shows.

That series is We Own This City, the 2022 HBO limited series created by The Wire collaborators David Simon and George Pelecanos. Bernthal stars as Baltimore Police Department Sergeant Wayne Jenkins in a story chronicling the rise and fall of the department’s Gun Trace Task Force. The series earned a 93% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes, and all six episodes are currently available to stream on HBO Max.

We Own This City Explores Corruption Inside Police Department

Rather than following a traditional police procedural, We Own This City explores corruption within the Baltimore Police Department. The miniseries will especially appeal to fans of The Wire, which Simon created and Pelecanos wrote and produced. Bernthal’s Jenkins anchors the nonlinear story as it traces the Gun Trace Task Force’s corruption and the investigation that exposed it.

Simon created the acclaimed HBO drama, while Pelecanos served as a writer and producer. Several The Wire actors also appear in We Own This City, including Jamie Hector, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Domenick Lombardozzi, Tray Chaney, and Delaney Williams. Despite those familiar faces and creative connections, the limited series tells a separate story centered on the real Gun Trace Task Force scandal.

We Own This City Adapts the True Story Of Baltimore Task Force

What makes We Own This City even more unsettling is that the corruption at its center is based on a true story. The series adapts Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton’s nonfiction book We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, and Corruption, which chronicles the real scandal surrounding the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force. Bernthal portrays the real Wayne Jenkins, who led the unit before becoming one of the officers implicated in the federal investigation.

That true-story foundation separates We Own This City from Bernthal’s other crime dramas. Unlike The Walking Dead’s Shane Walsh or The Punisher’s Frank Castle, Wayne is based on a real person, giving the actor a very different kind of morally complicated character to portray. For fans who know him best from those roles, the six-episode HBO Max series offers another side of the actor’s crime-heavy career.

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