A while ago, I reviewed The Wire on my low budget, miserabilist BBC4 show Screen Wipe, calling it "the best TV show of the past decade" in the process. I was wrong. I hadn't seen the fourth season then, which subsequently convinced me it's the best TV show since the invention of radio - Charlie Brooker.
It was Barack Obama who got me into The Wire. "In a recent story in The Nation," wrote Brian Cook of In These Times, "Chris Hayes used 2,200-plus words to argue why progressives should back Sen. Barack Obama. I’ll use only seven: Obama’s favorite TV show is The Wire."
If you've never heard of it you're not alone (its viewing figues in Britain were under forty thousand). But if Charles Dickens had written for TV, he would have written something like The Wire. Bleak and multi-layered, each of the five series looks at a different but interlocking facet of Baltimore life: the War on Drugs, the decline of heavy industry, politics, public schools and the media.
Put simply, it's the best TV show ever made.
7 comments:
Thanks for the tip, I'll have to check it out. It has huge ratings on IMDB.com and by what you're saying it sounds pretty appealing to me. Thank you again.
Take care, Julie
No problem, Julie. I've never met anyone who hasn't loved The Wire. That's not the ringing endorsement it could be: I only know about three or people who've ever seen it.
Actually, make that two.
..three now (do 3.5 episodes count?).. after seeing/hearing it mentioned here and there, I found some eps on the 'net and now I'm hooked.
Problem is, German TV channels are "not interested" in buying/showing it.
Guess I'll have to buy the DVDs...
If you're hooked now, just wait until you get to series 4.
I should probably warn you now though - there is a character called Dennis Wise.
Does he get beaten up in a dark alley? In that case I'll buy season 4 first :)
Even better - he gets shot in the leg.
judging by the aim, was he shot by a Newcastle player?
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