Rolling Stone ranks The Wire the second-best TV show ever made. Entertainment Weekly named it the best in 2013. The man who made it spent six years fighting HBO to keep it on the air. They were trying to cancel it after every single season. The ratings never came. Season 2 peaked at 3.71 million viewers an episode. By the final season the average was under a million. The 2008 series finale pulled around 1 million, against The Sopranos finale's 11.9 million nine months earlier. After Season 3, HBO was ready to end it. Two of the show's biggest characters had been killed off or sent to prison. To the network, that was a natural finish. David Simon disagreed. He spent two years pushing HBO to renew, which is why Season 4 didn't premiere until 21 months after Season 3 ended. He'd wanted Season 4 to cover immigration in Baltimore. By the time HBO finally said yes, there was no time to research it, so he switched to the public schools, where his writing partner Ed Burns had taught for years. He also pitched HBO a spinoff about Tommy Carcetti, the politician character. Simon later said HBO boss Chris Albrecht looked at him like, "Dude, I'm trying to figure out how to cancel the one show." Season 5 was supposed to be 13 episodes. HBO cut it to 10. The first episode of the shorter season is called "More with Less." The casting almost fell apart for another reason. Idris Elba faked an American accent through four auditions to get Stringer Bell. He's from East London. The casting director coached him to lie. Dominic West, who played lead detective Jimmy McNulty, was also British, from Yorkshire. Simon didn't find out until the actors first read the script together. He'd specifically asked for Americans. Carolyn Strauss, the HBO executive who approved The Wire (and The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under), also saved one of its main characters. Simon had written Detective Kima Greggs to die in Season 1, episode 10. Strauss told him no. The awards did nothing for it. Two Emmy nominations across five seasons, both for writing. Zero wins. None of the actors were ever nominated, not even Idris Elba, Michael K. Williams, or Michael B. Jordan. Zero Golden Globe nominations either. One HBO executive said the network blamed the East Coast setting and the LA-based Emmy voters. The show that beat it every Sunday in the ratings was Desperate Housewives, originally pitched to HBO and turned down by Carolyn Strauss. Two things kept The Wire alive. Simon refused to give up. The show built a reputation that only paid off after it had ended. People bought the DVDs and told their friends. The show that almost died five times became the one everyone said you had to watch. The greatest show in television history got five seasons out of a network trying to cancel it after every one.