And once you watch The Wire, you start seeing references to it in other shows. Like this. And this.
Yeah he spent a lot of time shadowing cops for his book but was not a cop himself.
Specifically the Baltimore Police allowed him to spend every day for a full year with one homicide squad. Out of that came the non-fiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. It’s a fantastic book, I highly recommend it. All of the characters were fictionalized for the TV show but they came out of that year he spent.
Speaking of Homicide, is there anywhere to watch that other than on DVD? I haven’t seen it since it was first on TV and I’d like to catch it again.
Not that I’ve been able to find. I recommend that show pretty frequently, and it’d certainly be nice to be able to point folks to a less expensive option. At least there’s finally been a re-lease of the full series at a reasonable price, and Netflix is pretty cheap too.
Agree 100%. Turn on the CCs.
*Breaking Bad *and The Wire are clearly Top Two among multi-season TV drama series, and I’ll guess Sopranos is your #3. (But what’s #4? If Justified is #4 it’s a very distant #4.)
Good comments. The opening scene grabbed me, but I guess it takes longer for some.
Caveat to Idle Thoughts: This is one series where you definitely want to watch the seasons and episodes in order.
It was only after watching both series that I learned they were from the same book. I also really liked Homicide but, despite their common origin, the whole style, tone and perspective of these two series are very different.
Hands down, the best TV series ever made. I, too, envy you getting to see it for the first time. I didn’t watch it during the original run, but have since watched the entire thing twice. I’ll let a few years go by and do it again.
The Wire ran from 2002 to 2008. So not 20 years old.
nm
And the prison guard they called Pornstache on Orange is the New Black.
Yeah, in Homicide, the cops are average guys spending most of their time BSing and talking, while dealing with idiots and drunks all day. In the Wire, the cops are idiots and the crooks are just dealing with life being hard, talking in poetry, and being far more noble than most of the cops.
I’m willing to believe that Homicide may have made the cops better and the police hierarchy less corrupt than reality, so that they were more appealing to watch. But I’m not buying the idea that the crooks aren’t almost always complete idiots and drunks. Between the two, particularly given that Homicide was written just after serving with the homicide department (as a sit-in journalist), I’m pretty confident that the early seasons of Homicide are far more realistic.
I also suspect that most of the long-term stings that are shown on the Wire would be more the sort of thing that the FBI would do than a regular police department, though I grant that I haven’t looked that one up.
Idle,
Did you ever get around to watching any more episodes?