#david-simon

This, officially, is the coolest thing to happen in the land of The Wire since that talking Clay Davis bobblehead became a reality via Kickstarter: Barack Obama, POTUS and proud fan of The Wire, invited series creator David Simon to the White House to chat with him about criminal justice reform.

Lest you think this was just the President’s attempt to get Simon in the House to geek out about the HBO drama, not so. Simon, in addition to creating the series that covered everything from failing school systems and journalism to politics and criminal reform, was a Baltimore Sun reporter on the crime beat, and wrote the books The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (which was adapted as the HBO miniseries of the same name) and Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which inspired both the NBC drama Homicide and The Wire.

Related: 'House of Cards,' 'Scandal,' and the Other TV Shows U.S. Politicians Are Binge-Watching

During the interview, seen in the video above, Obama and Simon discuss how law enforcement efforts to focus on arresting everyone involved with drug offenses, even non-violent offenders, didn’t prove to be an effective way to deal with the problem, and in fact, left people feeling less safe, and ignored the bigger issues.

And yes, the President does also let his fanboy freak flag fly, telling Simon The Wire, is “one of the greatest not just television shows, but pieces of art in the last couple of decades,” and confirming that Michael K. Williams’s Omar was his favorite character.

Having chronicled the bureaucratic nightmares of Baltimore and New Orleans, David Simon now brings his ever-skeptical eye to Yonkers, New York in his upcoming HBO miniseries, Show Me a Hero. The six-episode series is based on the life story of Nick Wasicsko (played by Oscar Isaac), who became mayor of that city in 1987 at the age of 28. Elected into office after suggesting that he’d oppose a court-mandated order to desegregate Yonkers’s housing, Wasicsko soon reversed course and supported the measure, and paid a price for it at the polls.

Adapted by Simon from a 1999 non-fiction account of the young mayor’s short tenure and directed by Paul Haggis, Show Me a Hero positions Wasicsko as a politician eager to do the right thing in the face of overwhelming opposition. “For the first time in my life, I am on the right side of something,” he tells his wife, Nay (Carla Quevedo), in this just-released trailer, adding “And I am all alone.” As an actor, Isaac isn’t alone, though. The crack ensemble supporting him includes Catherine Keener, Winona Ryder, Jon Bernthal, Jim Belushi, and Clarke Peters, who has appeared in each one of Simon’s past HBO projects, from The Corner to The Wire to Treme. City governments may be unreliable, but based on our past experience with the work of Simon, he very rarely lets you down.