Devotees of The Wire, myself among them, should be delighted by this hint given by one of the HBO drama's actors. Dominic West, who plays the increasingly manic police detective, Jimmy McNulty, tells the Los Angeles Times some of his colleagues are lobbying David Simon for a movie spinoff, and the show's creator is indeed considering a prequel. But here's the sacrilegious thought, which I can't suppress: the final season is not the triumph that fans had hoped for; and it's time for Simon to let go.

We love the Wire, even if the newsroom scenes are clumsy. But will former reporter and the HBO show's creator, David Simon, stop with the stream of essays? More importantly, will his fellow journalists, flattered though they are to be dramatized in the latest season of the show, stop running the pieces? Enough, already. [Baltimore Magazine]

The creator of The Wire, HBO's crime-and-politics drama, used to work at the Baltimore Sun. Here's his press pass, from a recent memoir of his newspaper days, in Esquire. Funniest story: when Simon, as a newbie reporter, thought that oral sex had been legalized in Maryland. Simon is less amused by the transgressions of some former colleagues, portraying them variously as corporate stooges, buffoons and fabricators.

John Carroll (pictured speaking) became a newspaper martyr when in 2005 he resigned as editor of the Los Angeles Times rather than implement budget cuts demanded by the penny-pinching corporate overlords. But that wasn't enough for David Simon, creator of The Wire, the HBO drama about crime, politics and the media in Baltimore. Simon, a former reporter at the Baltimore Sun, still blames Carroll for "single-handedly destroying" the newspaper; he's the model for the bland manager of Simon's television show who urges staff to do "more with less". [Baltimore Sun via Fimoculous]