Is it true what people say? That The Wire is the greatest TV show of all time?

Cafe Society
1

I’m just reading all these superlatives :

"When television history is written, little else will rival “The Wire,” a series of such extraordinary depth and ambition that it is, perhaps inevitably, savored only by an appreciative few. "
-Brian Lowry, Variety

“It is the best drama in HBO history – all due respect to ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Deadwood,’ ‘The Wire’ is deeper, tighter and more ambitious - and one of the finest works ever produced for American television.”

-Alan Sepinwall, New Jersey Star-Ledger

“… ‘The Wire’ is more than just the best show on television. This sprawling, ferocious drama is one of the richest, most compelling pieces of entertainment created by anyone at any time in pop-culture history. And even that over-the-top endorsement feels like it comes up short somehow.”

-Karla Peterson, San Diego Union Tribune
“Rather than split hairs, let’s just say that the breadth and ambition of ‘The Wire’ are unrivaled and that taken cumulatively over the course of a season – any season – it’s an astonishing display of writing, acting and storytelling that must be considered alongside the best literature and filmmaking in the modern era.”

-Tim Goodman, San Francisco Chronicle
**
“ ‘The Wire’ isn’t just impressive TV, its impressive art, and it shows just how far the medium has come – and where, one hopes, it’s going….the best analogy might be the serialized 19th-century novel, the kind of thing that kept Dickens fans lined up at newsstands in anticipation of the next installment.”**

-Mary Park, Seattle Times

"The Wire" is the greatest original dramatic series ever produced for television. It has yet to get a best-series Emmy nomination, much less win, but it deserves that trophy, an Oscar, a National Book Award and a freakin’ Nobel Peace Prize to boot."

  • Noel Holston, Newsday

"A critic for this paper once declared “The Wire” “the greatest dramatic series ever produced for television” and as the fourth season gets under way Sunday night, there’s no reason to quibble with that assessment."

  • Verne Gay, Newsday

**“A vibrant, masterful work of art, HBO’s novelistic urban saga The Wire is the best show on television.” **

-LA Weekly, Robert Abele
**
“ ‘The Wire’ keeps getting better, and to my mind it has made the final jump from great TV to classic TV – put it right up there with ‘The Prisoner’ and the first three seasons of ‘The Sopranos’.”**

  • Stephen King

** “The shows are so powerful - so well-written, acted, filmed and edited - that the experience of watching them has left me a complete wreck.

I am so blown away by this show that I will go out on a limb here to declare that these 13 episodes just might comprise the single finest piece of work ever produced for American TV.” **

-Adam Buckman, New York Post

**"Viewers need to approach the show as they might a great piece of American literature. Patience is required, as the show takes its time establishing its characters and setting its themes.

But if you stick with it, you will be rewarded with some of the most compelling, provocative drama ever produced for television. Yes, it’s difficult. It’s brutal and violent. It’s a trip to the dark side of the American experience. It’s challenging work in a medium that most often honors the easily digestible."**

  • San Jose Mercury News, Charlie McCollum

What do you guys think?

2

Yup, I would say I agree with all that. I would say more but, well, you just quoted a bunch of people who right better than I do, so I’ll just stick with, “Yup”.

3

Write far better than you right in fact.

I still think the best TV drama series I have seen is Cracker starring Robbie Coltrane, but since then The Wire is hard to top.

4

English genius Charlie Brooker talks about The Wire

5

I just went to HBO’s website to see when the next episode was going to come one, and that is the weirdest website I have been on.
I understand they want me to watch the shows on there (for a subscription) but danggit getting a schedule for the broadcasts is not immediately easy to find which is stupid.

I wish other developers would pay attention to user needs rather than corporate needs.

6

Yes, it really is. Just don’t think of it as a “tv show”, it won’t help you.

7

First of all, HBO, as a subscription cable service, doesn’t “broadcast” anything. Second, The Wire completed its 5 series run in 2008. Unless HBO or another licensed channel is rerunning the series, you’ll either have to watch it streaming over IP or beg/borrow/buy/Netflix the collective series.

As for whether it is “the best show evah!”, I personally believe that honor goes to St. Elsewhere (or if we can count limited run series, it is a toss-up between Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and I, Claudius if limited run serials are allowed) but The Wire is great television with tight and yet realistic plotting. Although it is sometimes compared to The Shield, the latter misses greatness in its efforts to deliver 24-like plot twists to keep amping up the story which eventually become implausible, while The Wire never threatens to go off the rails. (Even the sometimes decried “Hamsterdam” plotline is resolved in a discouragingly plausible fashion.) It is well worth the sixty hours of viewing time.

Stranger

8

Nobody ever accused me of having great taste, but I disagree with all the superlatives. It was good, for sure, but no better than a lot of other shows I’ve seen. I lost interest about halfway through its run, though, so maybe I missed a killer last season.

It gets a lot of points for stark realism, but it’s not as realistic as “Cops,” and it’s not as entertaining as other shows that are only semi-realistic, like “The Shield.”

I guess I’d say “Firefly” is the best series I’ve seen. Of course, it wasn’t on long enough to run out of steam.

9

Yes.

10

I couldn’t get into it, for some reason, which is odd because I love police/crime dramas. I don’t have HBO so we buy the DVDs for shows we want to see (Deadwood being my choice for best ever.) So after hearing great things about it, we bought the Wire full series and I’ve attempted it twice. I don’t get past the second or third episode without losing interest. Does it suddenly get a lot better? To be fair, I didn’t love Deadwood’s first episode, but then it picked up quick and grabbed me.

11

I’d say if it’s not the greatest, it’s up there. However, there’s a lot of people for whom it has limited or zero appeal and it imho requires a lot of time that many people wouldn’t be bothered putting into a show. I enjoyed it more on the second viewing than on the first.

12

I love The Wire. It took me a while to understand how it is structured: where most TV shows are a series of interconnected short stories, The Wire is really set up like a novel. If you are expecting a short story, the early episodes seem really rather pointless. But if you think of them as the opening chapters in a novel, they make sense.

13

No, it doesn’t get a lot better suddenly, but there’s such a great continuity and development of storyline and characters, that if you give it enough time you will love it, I think.

Read the next two posts after yours for more insight. I particularly like Manda Jo’s characterization of it as like a novel. I agree, and if you are looking at it as a series of short stories featuring the same characters you will be disappointed.

As to the OP, I will say that it is among the best shows ever on TV, And I think that it’s interesting that almost all of the best are from HBO, including Rome, Deadwood (though I thought the last season jumped the shark), and Six Feet Under.

14

Indeed.

15

I had a difficult time getting into it, quitting both right in the beginning, and in the beginning of season two. As did several of my friends.

Nevertheless, I finally watched it all. Several times. And I now think it is the greatest tv show of all time, by quite a margin even. (The next, I guess, are Deadwood and Breaking Bad.)

16

There are over a dozen threads/polls at SDMB that explore this message board’s tastes and preferences concerning The Wire, even as compared with other great and favorite TV shows. I assisted in getting together a series of polls that tried to determine the favorite character(s) from the show. And much discussion of why the show worked so well, especially for its time and channel, can be found with a little searching.

My own evaluation of the show, after a few years’ hindsight, is that it is easily in the Top Ten and maybe the Top Five. But there are decent rivals (at any one time) for “the greatest TV show of all time.”

My own Top x-number would have to acknowledge at least these rivals:

Breaking Bad
The Sopranos
Deadwood
The Shield
Justified (newer than The Wire but a challenger all the same)

and might stretch to include:

Mad Men
NOVA
Cosmos
The West Wing
Dexter
Sons of Anarchy

and even though it got axed after just one season: Terriers!

In summary, I personally cant even pick any one show.

If you want, I could post some links to the more volatile discussions of The Wire at SDMB.

17

Obviously, personal taste has a lot to do with it, and there’s a lot of great shows.

But I’d have to pick… The Wire. It’s the best I’ve ever seen.

18

I don’t get sucked into TV shows. I’m one of those annoying people who watches TV about two or three hours every week (usually on Sundays, when I tune into Animation Domination on Fox).

But I was fully engrossed in The Wire. Not all seasons were equally good, and there were some subplots that I didn’t particularly care for, but the show is like digital crack. When it aired, I would have withdrawal symptoms during the week. I had to sing the theme song to help me get me through.

I liked the Sopranos too. But by the end of the show, I had no sympathy left for any of the characters. With a couple of exceptions, all of them were so ugly that I couldn’t feel for them anymore. But in The Wire, I felt there was something both good AND bad about just about everyone. Plus, the show had a very compelling anti-hero…one of the best television characters of all time, IMHO.

19

(emphasis mine)

There can be no doubt in my mind that Omar Little (I really do hope he’s the one you mean!) is the single best character ever created (or acted) on TV! It’s his arc and the subtext he embodies that elevates The Wire to the heights it has. Without Omar the show would just be great cop TV. With Omar it reaches the level of art and literature others upthread are talking about.

Excellent point, monstro, that it took your pointing out for me to realize.

20

I’m pretty sure he meant McNulty.