Many Dopers have spoken well of the late HBO series The Wire. I am not one of them, not because I have any antipathy towards the series but because I have, for no particular reason, ever watched it.
Convince me I should change that, and why. Bonus points for the most cogent, least-spoilery entry.
I started watching THE WIRE and thought it was just fine, but overrated.
I got into the second season and realized what they were doing and just how observant and layered the thing was going to be. It’s novelistic in the best sense of the word, I swear: you can pretty much start each season and it’s like turning to the next 200 pages and reading “Part Two,” “Part Three,” etc.
The fourth season is probably the best one year of television I’ve ever seen, but I wouldn’t start there. The entire experience is a treat.
It does get really, really ugly at times, but it’s not sensationalistic.
I have seen the Wire and therefore cannot fulfill your request. I am sorry.
I began watching the show just recently, on cable On Demand. I have seen the first 3 seasons, and I’m eagerly awaiting them to post up the first half of season 4. I think that will be in just a couple of days.
I’m a huge fan. The plots are lucid, the acting is very good, the action is plausible. The good guys act like assholes at least half the time, and the bad guys seem pretty much like normal people who make the choices they do because they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I particularly enjoy the depiction of the police bureaucracy and how it makes decisions and allocates resources. It makes me shake my head in amazement over the pettiness, yet think to myself, “Yeah, I can see that.” Honestly, though I have no idea at all how realistic it is, it strikes me as VERY realistic.
When they put up another set of programs (they usally post them 6 or 12 at a time), I watch 3 or 4 episodes a night until I’ve seen them all. I don’t watch anything else while I’m doing this, except the Daily Show.
I highly recommend it.
+1 to abcdefz’s post. He said it way better than I could have.
I will say that you might not dig it the first season, or see what all the fuss is about. It’s sort of a standard police procedural show (or seems to be, anyway.) It’s as the series continues that you see how layered it is.
Also, it really rewards people for paying attention to small details. Actually, it demands this from it’s viewers. It doesn’t coddle you with back story and exposition. There are a lot of characters and a lot of things that happen without a lot of extraneous explanation and as a viewer, you just have to learn how to watch that this of show. It takes a bit of getting used to but if you stick with it, the payoff is great.
I read an interview with the creator once and he said that starting out, they had to “teach people how to watch our show.” I buy that. It’s like nothing else.
Just out of idle curiosity, why’d you bother posting?
Don’t be a dumbass. Watch The Wire.
Agree with abcdefz that it takes a while to realize just how great it is (and season 4 is indeed the best). I was initially put off watching it because of the subject matter, and thought it would be a complete downer and “gritty” just for the sake of it (i.e., because it was on HBO). But the thing most people don’t mention is how fun the show is. It’s not a mystery show, per se, but after a few episodes you absolutely want to see what happens next, just like with the best mysteries. Really, it’s more like a puzzle, and learning how all the pieces fit together is a rewarding experience. It’s got a lot more humor than people give it credit for, as well, and while it’s not an action show, it has more than its share of excitement. It’s also got, IMO, the most fully developed characters ever put on screen - the only competition as far as characterization would be novels. Which means you actually care about the people on screen, both “good guys” and ''bad guys" - no mean feat in itself.
It’s also probably the most realistic show (or movie) I’ve seen, in a good way - not a lot of Hollywood cliches and story arcs that are telegraphed from the beginning. And it makes you look at things in a new way - it really does a good job of showing how one issue (inner city drugs) affect an entire city and all its disparate, seemingly discrete elements. That it does this without (for the most part) being preachy or making it feel like a sociology lecture, and in an entertaining manner, is a small miracle.
I’m no snob - I watch plenty of crap on TV - but it’s so far above the level of any other drama that even non-snobs can appreciate it. If you do decide to watch it, give it time - it takes a while to grow on you.
ETA: Jeez, about 5 people replied while I was typing my response. Sorry if I’m repeating shit.
I hate hate hate procedural shows because the ones I’ve seen have always been an odd mix of utterly predictable and bizarrely outlandish, but I thoroughly enjoyed the first few seasons of The Wire. They manage what seems to be completely impossible on TV these days - they make everyone on every side seem realistically human. You can relate to them, even as they’re doing horrible, horrible things, or trying and failing to do good things. The characters feel real and authentic, and that draws you in in a very intense way.
I only saw the first three seasons for various reasons, but I’d like to catch the rest someday.
Wire fans might want to follow along with Alan Sepinwall’s blog, rewatching season 2, an episode each week. (He’s also doing Band of Brothers and Sports Night.)
Sepinwall calls it the best TV show ever. I think he’s right. It’s a whole new way to watch TV (novelistic, like abcdefz said), and we’ll probably never see TV in that form again. It’s too difficult, especially for viewers.
Crap, I’m putting Supernatural back in the box. Frank Sobotka, Beadie Russell, Ziggy of the Prodigious Dick, wait – I’m coming!
Also, Skald, if you end up watching it, I’d love to get your reactions as you go along. It would be interesting to see if you were as stunned and amazed by the end of season 4 as I was.
Also, if you watch, avoid reading spoilers online at all costs.
I never saw the show, but after I learned it was created by David Simon and partially based on his excellent book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, I deeply regretted not watching it from the first. I plan on watching it when I can.
As others have pointed out, the lack of exposition in The Wire reminded me of a “dense” novel. You might not get what the hell is going on for the first hundred pages, but it all makes sense as you go along. And the wait is worth it.
They’ve just started showing the entire series on BBC2 here (previously, it had only been on pay channels). It has been hyped up here too as the Best Series Ever Made (chiefly by Charlie Brooker, darling of media hipsters).
I have to say, despite having my expectations raised ludicrously high, I did really enjoy the first season. Season 2, which we’re just finishing, I am finding less compelling, but still very watchable. It seems to me that a season of The Wire is more like one very long feature film than your usual episodic TV drama. You can’t really just pick it up half way through and make any sense of it.
Some things bug me about it. Fans of the show make a big deal about how it doesn’t pander to the viewer, and expects them to pay close attention at all times etc. etc. But they take it to extremes sometimes. You get these random interactions, sometimes involving completely new characters, and they only make sense in reference to things that are shown later. You’re expected to retain all this stuff in order to follow exactly what is going on.
So I think there are two ways of approaching it: watch every episode twice (which is what I do, except I rewatch in blocks of two or three - it’s surprising how much you pick up second time round); or let everything wash over you without worrying too much about the precise detail of the plot. I couldn’t do that, because I am not convinced that The Wire is so good that it stands up even without the basic story.
I think season 2 has a weak first few episodes, because they attempt to hit the ground running with a whole roster of new characters that it is difficult to care about, while at the same time keeping the plates spinning on the established characters. There are good reasons why TV dramatists don’t do this sort of thing, and The Wire’s writers got it wrong here, IMO.
Layered is exactly the right word. The characters are incredibly complex and it’s not so easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
One other thing: it’s a show you actually need to watch and pay attention to. If it’s just on in the background while you’re online or something, you’ll miss a lot.
Auntie Pam stole my answer - Alan Sepinwall is the greatest American TV critic, and he says it’s the best, and calls it The Great American Novel on TV. And he’s giving you a detailed, episode by episode breakdown for perusal after watching.
His episode recaps/reviews.musings start here: Season 1, Episode 1. Be sure to read the Newbie versions, and not the Veteran (for those who have seen all 5 seasons) versions.
I recently started watching it on OnDemand, too. I resisted a long time. (I still have never seen The Sopranos, for example.) The Wire is great. The great thing is how both sides–the criminals and the cops–have to put up with the same petty BS. People on both sides have bosses that are riding them, they have quotas to make, they’re trying to climb the corporate ladder and aren’t sure that they want to…
The irritating thing for me was just how LONG it took them to get to the namesake, “the wire.” They don’t get into any phone tapping stuff until deep into the season. But look past that. It’s a sweet series.
Which reminds me–I have to watch the next episodes that are in the queue on OnDemand…
We watched it on NetFlix. It took us a few episodes of Season 1 to get into it, but by Season 3 we had pretty much dumped all our other NetFlix viewing to go with it.
I can’t say for sure that they get everything right about Baltimore, but the creators had worked in the police department and the press there, so I’m betting they did. Some of the bit parts were filled by people who know the city (including a former mayor.) One real person behind one of the major roles is in the show, but wasn’t authentic playing himself. 
The show was recommended to us by a friend whose husband is a reporter, and they loved Season 5 which centers around the newspaper.
Things are beautifully set up. Actions in this show have consequence - nothing like your typical cop show where a chase leads to 15 wrecked civilian cars with nobody noticing, and no paperwork. Consequences not only extend across shows, but across seasons. Watch carefully.
The actions of characters are always motivated by events and their personalities.
Not a stereotype to be seen. One major character starts out as kind of a rat, becomes a good guy, and turns into a kind of rat again totally due to the pressures he is under. Could we do better? Not at all clear.
Some parts are also very funny. Some parts are horrible. I’m not a big fan of police shows, but this was awesome.
Excellent! I’ll check this out, having seen all five seasons. I have this feeling he’s seen stuff I didn’t notice the first time through. Thanks!
I’ve seen this show and Homicide, which is sort of a spiritual parent to The Wire. Personally, I would recommend buying Homicide, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Smiley’s People and just forgo The Wire.
Personally, I think it did more than this. All of the good guys are assholes all of the time. The criminals are the only semi-likable people, but even them not so much except for Stringer Bell. So essentially there’s only one character in the whole show to sympathize for, which means that 99% of the time you’re watching people you don’t care about.
This also seemed overdone, to the point of introducing caricatures.
While, perhaps, more realistic than most shows, The Wire still comes across as a fictional representation of the police world as viewed through the lens of a hardcore liberal. Homicide was based on the writings of that same guy, but decades earlier when he’d just gotten out of the real experience of driving around with cops and was writing about it without personal politics.
24 might be a conservative wet dream, but it doesn’t portray itself as realistic. The Wire thinks that it is doing so, and is a bit smug about it, which personally rubbed me the wrong way.