I keep mentioning the
The Wire only to be met with blank stares and the occasional question 'Don't you mean Homicide: Life on the Street or Law and Order: Chesapeake Bay?' I don't.
The HBO drama is about to enter its 5th season always being the poor cousin to the Sopranos. The Wire follows the downward career path of Baltimore cop Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West, above), but saying the show is about one character, plot or story-arc is an extreme over-simplification. The Wire requires that the viewer absolutely start at the beginning, understand a number of different accents, and pay very close attention to the relationship between characters. An
org chart is initially needed to keep the actors straight.
Why do this? Why would one invest the time needed to enjoy this particular show? Well, the short answer is 'Trust me, it's worth it'.
'The American obsession with police procedural and crime drama usually only allows for villains - in large part, black and brown - who exist as foils, to be pursued and destroyed by cop heroes. We're addressing ourselves to where the 'villains' actually come from, and whether we have any right to regard them as somehow less human than the rest of us.' - Series creator David Simon.
The second season is slightly better than the first; all 12 episodes contain classic scenes written exquisitely:
- The Baltimore Police, the Port Authority, US naturalization and the Coast Guard all arguing about under whose jurisdiction the murders of 13 illegal immigrants fall. Except each doesn’t want the case and use every excuse available to get out of the investigation.
- Greggs and Daniels switching responsibilities to tell each other’s wives they are back on the detail.
- The police surveillance van being stolen, packed in a container, and then having a photograph taken as it travels the globe, Amilie-style, sent back to Major Valchek.
The tragic figure of Frank Sobotka is probably my favourite. Every episode, the pressure he is under builds; Frank is breaking the law but definitely not a villain.
The show receives praise inversely proportional to its popularity. This quote from the New York Times, was posted not in Arts and Leisure, but in Op-ed, the section usually reserved for the War in Iraq and criticism of the Administration :
'If Charles Dickens were alive today, he would watch “The Wire,” unless, that is, he was already writing for it. The pay-cable television series is the closest that moving pictures have come so far to the depth and nuance of the novel.'Heady stuff. And David Simon clearly does not give a hoot about who watches, goading viewers with these comments:
'My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.'The closest example of TV this good, requiring the viewer to pay rapt attention was probably the BBC production of Smiley's People. As with that min-series, the investment one makes, org chart and all, pays off and The Wire is the best thing currently airing.
Rating: ****
