The Wire

[char1ie]

And season 5 has just started so I'll be watching episode 1 this weekend. 10 episodes only. Short and sweet.

Charlie

[SeanMacGabhann]

bumping because I know at least 2 forumites have started series 1...

[lozzyloz]

Up to episode 9 tonight if all goes to plan. I'm hooked. Loved the scene where McNulty and Bunk go back to do forensics at Diedre's vacant apartment. Motherf*ckerrrrrr!

[SeanMacGabhann]

that's the scene where things start to click for a lot of people...

ep 4 I think isn't it?

[dita-on-tees]

Just started watching this and I am hopelessly addicted to the point I have started going to bed an hour later and am getting dark circles under my eyes....

[SeanMacGabhann]

more converts, more!

[Keef]

Watched the first episode last night, and was up for another, but it was late, and Mrs Keef voted for the last Yes Prime Minister series 1 (which we will not be giving to Fear n' boozin as a late crimbo pressie).

I liked it. Right from the opening credits, you could see the HBO quality of Sopranos and Rome. To early to say I'm a convert, but it looks promising... Only hope that Mrs Keef comes with me on this, else it will be a nightmare trying to find the time to watch it on my own...

[david_carnell]

I love the number of converts we've managed.

I'm now awaiting the delivery of series three from Amazon rental. Series two was a terrific insight into the world fo the Baltimore dockers and their unusual breakfasts (pint of lager with a raw egg or two dropped in for good measure).

What does series three focus on? Politicians?

[mockney piers]

Oh jesus, those breakfasts. Made me feel white odd just watching it.

Series 3 returns to some of the themes from the first series and gets much more into politics at all levels.

[SeanMacGabhann]

to my mind series 3 and 4 are the strongest

But I watched an ep from series 2 on FX last night and was hooked for the whole thing - already classic scenes are magnified by the events that happen later on

[barrymarshall]

Just finished the third series last night in a three episode binge (I'd been pacing myself because I can't wait for the fourth series to come out on the 10th of March).

It really is the best television series I have ever seen. There is no other programme, to my knowledge, that is as realistic as this. I can't watch other shows now, they seem like mere pantomime.

Cannae wait for the fourth!

[mockney piers]

The fourth has such different pace to third, but I'm inclined to agree with the MacGabhann that it's the best yet.

[SeanMacGabhann]

You can tell by the speed of eveents that the end of series 3 came about because, although there were a series 4 and 5 written, there was also a chance they wouldn't get recommisioned after 3

But yeah, then ending of 3, the impact, the fallout (McNulty;s line near the end) - have to be careful not to spoiler

And you're right barrymarshall - all other TV shows are like pantomome afterwards. If they are OBVIOUSLY pantomime like Heroes they can still be enjoyable.. but anything pretending to be "serious" just looks like farce. Patronising farce at that

*feels mild sense of satisfaction that the thread has made 4 pages so far and most people who watched have been converted. Mwah hah hah*

[barrymarshall]

I can't wait! One of the show's strengths is that it shifts focus and pace with each series. I didn't think the stevedore storyline, first of all, would have the sufficient drama of the drug-gang, but three episodes in I was dead wrong. In fact, I liked the references to it at the end of series three - the Frank Sobotka posters and McNulty going back to ... Well, don't want to spoil it for anyone else!

[mockney piers]

I was reading a TV review saying that after many years of standard soap fare, The Bill was really stretching itself and becoming quality, challenging TV.

I've not watched it for best part of a decade, but can this possibly be true?!

Have the makers been watching the Wire and asking themselves? Why can't we do politics and issues?

It's a question, does anyone watch it?

[barrymarshall]

Indeed, SMG - season three did end with a massive crash, but it didn't feel falsely rushed. If anything it was good because there had been a slow build up of everything, and like the towers that were blown up at the beginning of the series, it is quicker for something to fall.

It also had, and again trying not to be too spoilerish, some intelligent things to say about the drugs trade. It is ugly, it does destroy lives, but it's here and it's all about how best we deal with it with what we've got, rather than what we wish we had. The parallels with the Iraq war were brilliantly made ("We are police, not soldiers").

I got so angry when the press got on the story about the zones ... but I liked the way the politicians actually did try and grapple with the issue rather than just go all knee-jerk.

And a few one-off things: Method Man as Cheese, the road trip chasing the phones, the guy reading porn in the stock room - and loads of other stuff.

[barrymarshall]

Haven't watched The Bill in donkey's MP - but if they are learning from a superior show then it's good. I may have to check it out. However, I did hear it is now a depository for the ex-cast of the nation's soaps...

[SeanMacGabhann]

well series 5 focuses on The Media so it looks like they will get a going over!

What about seeing THAT guy in THAT bar for a brief shot in series 3 as well?

I like Steve Earle's cameos as well

[barrymarshall]

The scene in the bar? Oh yes! Any other show would have had an episode or so dealing with it to get more mileage from the plot, but the great thing about the Wire is that it is happy to leave it to the audience's imagination.

Steve Earle was Waylon! I totally missed that ... though TBH I wouldn't recognise hos anyways. He does the theme tune for season five, it says ... Cracking stuff.

Speaking of, there are now two soundtrack albums out ... gonna get them and if anyone wants a copy, they'd be welcome.

[Keef]

I'm still way back on series 1, and really really enjoying it. Still, I have to say that I think you're all getting carried away. It is just a TV series, and whilst it is ooozing quality, it is still just a TV series, and I want to know how you guys are so sure it's so real? Are you FEDS, or dealers, or corrupt business men? I've seen all the same poolease stuff in other films and shows.

Like I say, I am really enjoying it, and it stands out as very good, but for me, from what I've seen so far, it's in no way superior to The Sopranos and 1 or 2 other series that have stood out.

It does however spunk on the likes of CSI and all that sh!te, the popularity of which I have never gotten my head around!

[mockney piers]

I you look at my early posts Keef, you'll se I agree; it's different to the Sopranos and they're both hugely entertaining in their own way.

The Wire has been very well researched. The writers spent a lot of time with the Baltimore police Dep't who apparently worship this programme as the only one who really tells it like it is.

There is a fair bit of police politics in series 1, but it's ramped up hugely in subsequent series.

Also it has an integrity of vision and breadth of scope i've not seen in any other long runner.

Band of Brothers could easily be compared in terms of integrity and quality, but much easier to do that in 8 episodes than it is across 5 series.

I love Heroes too, and though it's excellent at what it's doing, it's basically Rentaghost with megabucks thrown at it. Has anyone seen Jack Coleman and Harold Meaker in the same room together...anyone?

[Keef]

Never got in to Heros simply because I couldn't work out where I was as it was shown about 5 times a week at different times on different channels. I used to be in to Buffy and Angel though, so I'm not above anything!

Like a say, Wire is obviously class, and I know you liked a bit of Sopranos. Just find this thread quite funny, as I've never seen grown men (Sean) salivate over a TV programme in quite the same way before ;-)

[barrymarshall]

Why is The Wire the best TV show? Because, like I said earlier, the characters in it feel real, they're not just mouthpieces for a plot. The show does not trick audiences by hiding facts or having people do things out of character, just to get something going. Think how many shows just involve people saying things in a way that people would never talk in real life, just so they can get the next "clue" or whatever ...

And the world that The Wire maps out is unparalleled in television series. Again, how many shows are just a handful of locations or sets and nothing else. In The Wire, Baltimore is a character in itself and we are constantly seeing it from new angles. And not just in a physical sense either: in the show we see people just hanging out, doing ordinary stuff, things that don't add to anything in terms of moving a story along a line to a specific destination, but instead build a rounded and complex picture. Just like real life.

[mockney piers]

That's exactly it.

Scenes flesh out characters, rather than characters driving plot.

[barrymarshall]

David Simon speaks for himself:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/tvradio/story/0,,2008531,00.html

Unlike, say, the CSI franchise, where unequivocally good and good-looking men and women swan around swish offices, and viewers are accustomed to the crime lab delivering perpetrators neatly at the end of each episode, The Wire offers no such comforts. Here the cops are, for the most part, a bunch of aggressive, workshy drunks who inhabit a filthy basement so appallingly ill-equipped they barely have a computer between them. And the cops are of course pitted against the crooks, but since we spend as much time in the company of the latter as we do the former, our sympathies are forever being tested to breaking point.

"That's the problem with most cop shows," explains David Simon. "It's the black hat, white hat thing. I swear if I had to write a police procedural right now, I'd put a gun to my head. On shows where only the arrest matters, where it's about good and evil, punishing crime, the poor and the rich, the suspect exists to exalt the good guys, to make the Sipowiczes [the no-nonsense cop in NYPD Blue] and the Pembletons [the no-nonsense cop in Homicide - Life On The Streets] and the Joe Fridays [the no-nonsense cop in the protoypical Dragnet] that much more moral, that much more righteous, that much more intellectualised. It's to validate their point of view and the point of view of society. So, you end up with same stilted picture of the underclass. Either they're the salt of earth looking for a break, and not at all responsible, or they're dangerous and evil and need to be punished. That's a good precedent for creating an alienated America. Dramatically I have no interest in good versus evil. I am interested in institutions, and how they seek to preserve themselves even as they are crumbling."