The mysterious Jay Landsman

Jenn and I have been watching The Wire on DVD, and are in the middle of season 3. In the last episode, the mostly useless sergeant Jay Landsman, who is usually seen eating something, delivers a profane and heartfelt eulogy at an Irish wake, for a rather average cop who collapsed while using a Stairmaster.

For a couple of episodes before that, I had noticed the name Jay Landsman in the credits too. What was going on? Was an actor named Jay Landsman playing a cop with the same name? And if so, why?

Retired cop Greg Redmer explains it all on his blog. Seems that there was a real Jay Landsman on the Baltimore PD. After retiring he turned to acting, and played the mild-manned gray-mustachioed Lt. Dennis Mello on The Wire. Meanwhile the portly Delaney Williams played a character based on and named after the original, real Jay Landsman.

To make things even more interesting, the real Jay Landsman was also the inspiration for Detective Munch, played by Richard Belzer, whose character has appeared on no fewer than eight different TV series—allegedly a record.