There seems to be an HBO series that I had never heard of until recently, “The Wire”, and now journalists won’t shut up about it.
Slate, Salon, NYT, etc keep talking about what an amazing show it is.
(Here is the latest article on Salon)
This seems to be the final season of the show.
If the show is so great why didn’t they start telling the world about it earlier?
If you check Google trends for “The Wire”, you will see a huge increase in volume of stories starting at the end of 2007, which confirms my observation. [Actually, now that I checked, Google trends shows the volume of searches, and not stories, but I think the huge increase in searches is indicative of an increase in stories that brought the series to the public’s attention]
My questions are
*Why did all the media start talking about this show all of a sudden, and now it is the best thing since sliced bread?
Was there any other TV show about which the media were mum during its entire run, only to heap lavish praise on it in its final season?
It was a great series. Do yourself a favor and watch the previous seasons on DVD.
As for why the media didn’t jump on The Wire bandwagon earlier, they would have to pull their head of the asses of producers of all the crap reality programs first.
People who paid attention to The Wire knew from the beginning what an incredible show it was.
But it’s also a bit of a slow burner, a show that rewards ongoing, patient viewing and viewer concentration. It’s not packed into neat little capsule episodes, and it respects the intelligence of its audience. I think that might be part of the reason that it’s popularity and acclaim has tended to come to a boil more slowly, rather than rushing out of the gate as a big hit.
I know lots of people who never saw any of the first few seasons, but who are now watching them on DVD after being badgered by friends who have seen the show. I have quite a few friends who are in the middle of Season 2, or early in Season 3, and are absolutely addicted, even though they didn’t watch their first episode until a few months ago.
I’ve only just finished Season 4, because we don’t have HBO so i have to catch up once it moves to DVD. I won’t get to see Season 5 until later in the year sometime. If you decide to watch it, start from Season 1 and watch them in order; it’s efinitely not a series where you can just jump in anywhere.
Of course, the fact that i and many of my friends live in Baltimore means that there’s a certain “hometown” pride in the show, but even people who have never been here think it’s an amazing show. In my opinion, one of the few weaknesses of the show is the female characters. Despite the brilliant writing that is such a hallmark of The Wire, Simon and his colleagues still haven’t really managed to write female characters that are as complex and as interesting as the men. It’s a missed opportunity, IMO.
Still, probably one of the best things EVER on television.
This is fascinating. Tell me, how did you manage to get internet access from under the rock that you’ve apparently been living under?
I don’t watch the show, but I’ve been hearing about it for years. Just because you managed not to hear anything about it, doesn’t mean that the media has been keeping it hidden.
I can’t praise the show enough. It’s a perfect mix of storytelling and genuineness.
The first time I watched it, I abandonned it after the first couple episodes. When I gave it another shot, I was utterly hooked. There was a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ The Wire in my TV history.
I just wish I could tell the writers how much I love them.
Polerius: personal insults are not permitted in this forum. You have been around long enough to know better. Please do NOT do this kind of thing again. It is possible to disagree with a poster’s opinions without attacking them personally.
Polerius – critics have always liked it. It was season 4, however, when they really started dropping the “best show ever” stuff on The Wire, calling it steinbeckain, dickensian, shakespearean. . .show most like a novel ever.
It has been completely and totally ignored by the emmys.
I just finished watching season 3 on DVD. I had heard about the show for years. I saw previews now and then on HBO while waiting for The Sopranos or Deadwood to start. Pretty much everything I heard about The Wire was good. Yet for some reason I didn’t start watching it until a few months ago. I have to say that it lives up to the hype as well as anything could. It is a very, very good show.
I remember watching the first episode and thinking, “Eh, that was pretty good, sure, but not that good.” But by the end of season one I realized it was brilliant. Then I started season two and thought, “Wait, who are all these new people? Why should I care about this goofball? What did they do to this show?!” And by the end of season two I thought it was all handled brilliantly. The same happened with season three. The first two episodes had me fearing that the show had slipped from “brilliant” to merely “better than average”. But again it all came together beautifully. I have high hopes for season four, and hopefully season five will be out on DVD quickly.
I didn’t start watching until last summer, on DVD.
I had tuned in a couple of times during the first season but I had a knee jerk reaction to the scenes I caught and I didn’t think I’d like it. One scene was drunk McNulty picking up a woman in a bar and another was Kima and Cheryl necking on the couch. I’m thinking “Yawn, another ‘edgy’ cable show”. I had the same reaction to The Sopranos and refused to watch that show for a long time because of the language and violence. I thought the drinking/sex/language/violence was just to draw viewers and I didn’t realize there was good drama behind all that.
I also thought because of the show’s title that it was gonna be heavy on technical stuff, like Tom Clancy novels (which I’ve never read but have heard awful things about).
But around the third season, I started hearing lots of good things about the show, so I put the first season DVD on my Christmas list, and one of my kids bought it for me. After watching the first few episodes, I bought seasons two and three and then waited (and waited and waited) for season four to come out. This last season was the first I watched in real time.
I’ve watched all the seasons at least twice, and plan to watch them all again this summer.
Unlike Deadwood and The Sopranos, The Wire has never had a disappointing season, or even a disappointing episode. Hell, I can’t think of a disappointing scene or a contrived line of dialogue.
There’s no real mystery here. Critics and commentators have been raving about The Wire since it premiered. But recently it has become a particular favourite among newspaper types because the current season focuses on a newspaper.
The Wire has been critically lauded by The Guardian UK newspaper’s TV section since it started airing on the UK’s FX channel in 2003 or 2004 I think. I first saw it on Ireland’s TG4 which airs alot of lesser known HBO shows amongst other interesting things
I started watching **The Wire ** on DVD in late 2006 after reading rave reviews about it on this very message board for quite some time. I just finished Season 4 and am anxiously awaiting the release of Season 5 on DVD. My only complaint with Season 4 is that there was way too little McNulty. Plus, he didn’t get drunk once the entire season. Frickin’ Beadie!
I too, was a late convert. I don’t, as a rule, like police dramas. So I more or less ignored it, much as I’ve continued to ignore Homicide. But the critical praise ( which I was aware of ) did seem to steadily ratchet up year after year, perhaps for the reasons mhendo cites. Finally, in the run up to the fourth season, I caught the first few episodes on HBO On Demand and was intrigued.
At first, like BlackKnight I just thought it was good and rented the rest of season one. Then I thought it was great. By the end of season four I thought it was brilliant and it edged out Deadwood as my favorite TV show.
Not bad, considering I still don’t usually care for cop shows ;).
But yeah, I think the praise HAS been coming on hotter and heavier both because it was coming to an end this season and it is ending at a time when HBO programming is suddenly beginning to look a little thin.
I’ve watched most of season 5. I really don’t get what all the fuss is about. It’s a good show, sure, but hardly THE GREATEST EVER. “The Sopranos” was more entertaining. The one thing that did intrigue me about “The Wire” though was that is was one of very few shows to portray the urban black criminal underworld in a sophisticated way.
I saw much more of the talk about “greatest ever” during the tragic season four. I think most critics (like us viewers) have thought it fell off a bit during season five.