“This doesn’t make you tough; it makes you oppressed.” These are the words of Ras Baraka, Principal of Newark’s Central High School, ringing through a silent gymnasium as he addresses his students after one of their own has been shot down over the weekend. The incident caused a mostly white suburban high school to cancel their football game, scheduled to take place at Central High, due to fear of more violence. “This is not normal,” he says to the high schoolers. He rattles of a list of things—absent parents, jailed parents, violence in the neighborhood, harassment on the way to and from school, and fellow classmates being murdered—which he says most students do not have to deal with. As he speaks, the camera pans methodically across the faces of despondent students, but the truth of his words do not assuage their collective grief. Few things, it seems, are normal about the Newark portrayed in Marc Benjamin and Marc Levin’s five-part HBO documentary Brick City.

The documentary focuses on Mayor Corey Booker’s second full year in office and the attempt by his administration (and various community members) to pull the city out of a half-century decline into poverty and violence. The dramatic narrative of urban transformation revolves around the mayor and the police chief and their push to reduce the sky-high murder rate, the trials of Central High School, and two rival gang members who are star-crossed lovers trying to turn their lives around. Each element of the tripartite subject matter authenticates and validates the others.

Murder peppers each installment of Brick City at an alarming, and enthralling, rate. The reduction of Newark’s high murder rate serves as one of the series’ main themes, as does Booker’s attempt to navigate the politics of the police force in order to achieve this goal. With a population of 281,400, Newark averaged 90 murders a year from 1985 to 2005. By the end of 2008, the city hit its lowest murder rate in the last five years.

Surely, there is an element of perversity to the audience’s enthrallment with the violence, particularly as they form a relationship with the recurring characters affected by the murders. The assurance of the declining murder rate somehow redeems the perversity of the audience’s fascination. Part of the satisfaction of the Brick City viewing experience comes from the action-packed, harsh, and saddening reality of gang violence in Newark. The reduction of this murder rate, the victory of Mayor Booker and the police department, creates a powerful narrative arc. Yet some have criticized how the success of this reduced murder rate championed by Brick City has overshadowed the greater problems that still face Newark—particularly in regard to its high unemployment rate and failing education system.

Some of the moist poignant moments in Brick City come from Central High School Principal Ras Baraka and Assistant Principal Todd Warren. In one installment of the show, the two men lead the freshman boys in an all night “sleep in” at the school. “How many of you were raised by your momma?” asks Asst. Principal Warren. Almost every hand in the room shoots up. “How many of you know how to tie a tie?” he asks next. This time only two or three hands raise tentatively. Someone hands him a massive pile of ties as his face widens into a broad smile. “Well, tonight you’re gonna learn.” Principal Baraka pipes in, “I want you all to know, everyone in this room, you are under my protection.” The men are determined to serve as much-needed male role models for the young boys, for whom the most prevalent males are drug dealers and gang members.

Jayda and Creep, the respective Blood and Crip members who attempt to maintain a committed relationship, serve as microcosms of the documentary’s purpose; their continued gang membership authenticates them, while their responsible parenting and work with school children demonstrate the possibilities of redemption through dedication and hard work. Yet, Brick City never explains their continued gang affiliation in light of their reformation. This unresolved paradox highlights the prevailing disconnect of Brick City: how to balance the representation of an uplifting promise of redemption with the representation of, and allegiance to, an authentic and baser reality.

These stories constantly and ingeniously overlap and are ultimately representative of the larger and longer story of Newark. The subject matter and story structure of the documentary have drawn inevitable comparisons to the popular HBO series The Wire. Yet this comparison highlights a fundamental issue with Brick City: Unlike The Wire, it is not a fictionalized drama. The simultaneous presence of reality and choice to tell a story serve conflicting objectives. One is to inform, the other to entertain. This is not a conflict that this documentary necessarily needs to resolve, but it is an issue that the documentary and its response have brought to light.