Follow Up – The Wire

The Wire – HBO – 5 Seasons – USA

A couple of years ago a friend of mine said to me “Hey, you should see The Wire. It’s really good.” Now, this friend of mine loves How I Met Your Mother, Mad Men, Deadwood, The Inbetweeners, and any number of shows that I find just as amazing. Yet for some reason, like the fool that I am, I kept putting off watching The Wire. I watched the first couple of episodes and thought ‘sure this is a good cop show, but ‘the best series of all time’ like every man and his dog keeps proclaiming? I don’t know about that’. SoI kept putting it off and putting it off, watching one episode every four months or so when I could find the time for the hour long show with the tiresome opening credits sequence.

Three weeks ago though, I thought I may as well take the plunge and give The Wire a red hot go. It’s been over two years since I was first recommended this show by an actual human being and not just by some television critic from the magical world of the internet. I kicked myself into gear and picked up where I’d left off many months ago after first giving it a shot and you know what, shock of all shocks, I loved it.

I stormed through the remainder of season one, got my hands on the other four seasons as quickly as possible and did nothing else but spent my spare time watching The Wire. I can honestly offer no new insight into this show other than to echo the calls of those who have walked this path before me: The Wire is fantastic.

There are some who call it the greatest television series of all time and you know what, it may not be my favourite TV series of all time but do I think that it’s the greatest? Probably. I can declare my love for The Simpsons as being the most influential show on my life, but I haven’t watched more than a season from the last seven years. I can declare my love for a show like Deadwood or Freaks & Geeks but both shows frustratingly end before their time.

The Wire is a complete package. It has a beginning. It has a middle. And it has a goddamn end. The first season follows the lives of the police department and the guys on the street selling the drugs. The second season throws dock workers into the mix. The third season introduces us to the politicians. The fourth: the school system. The fifth: the newspapers. Each season doesn’t exclusively focus on a different area of Baltimore life; it builds on what’s come before.

The show is filled with dozens upon dozens of characters and I could list you the fifty best characters from the show and I still wouldn’t cover them all. I could tell you about Omar, his shotgun and his love of Honey Nut Cheerios, or Lester Freeman and his career crippling attention to detail, or Clay Davis and the way he says ‘sheeeeeit’, or Frank Sobotka, or Snoop, or Carcetti, or McNulty, or… If you’ve seen the show you don’t need to hear anything more, you’re probably just nodding in agreement recalling your favourite moments from these incredibly realized and fantastic characters.

To be perfectly honest I’m never going to be able to do The Wire justice by throwing expressions like ‘multi-layered’, ‘unprecedented depth’ and ‘unparalleled attention to detail’ around. All you need to know is that it may be slow to get into but like all great shows The Wire rewards your attention. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you say ‘oh shit!’ like a dozen times throughout the seasons. It’s brilliant.

As you’ve probably heard before The Wire turns the city of Baltimore into a living breathing organism, which we see from every walk of life; from a heroin addict on the street to the Mayor in city hall. Most shows would be lucky to create one half-interesting character while The Wire creates dozens. I could seriously just start listing character names and moments from the series purely to trigger my own memory just so I can smile or shake my head and say ‘wow’.

The Wire reminds you that HBO have been responsible for some of the best damn television programs ever made. In a month where they brought into the world pathetic also-rans like How To Make It In America, The Ricky Gervais Show and Funny Or Die Presents it’s good to be reminded of such a fact. As soon as I finished The Wire, I grabbed my proverbial calendar and scribbled the date ‘April 11^th’ down; that’s when creator David Simon’s next series, Treme, comes out; set in a post-Katrina New Orleans it’s needless to say that expectations are sky high.

My friend was right; I did need to see The Wire. Don’t be an idiot like me and don’t keep putting it off. Watch The Wire; just be prepared for it to ruin all other television for you. I’ve watched a couple of episodes of Sons Of Anarchy since The Wire finished and while Sons is a perfectly good show all I could think was ‘hmm, I wonder how The Wire would have handled this situation. I bet it would have been fantastic.’