The OP seems to expect some sort of correlation between quality and popularity. This is often not the case.
I’ve just finished watching the second season of The Wire. It is an excellent show for what it is. It’s well crafted, has something to say, and is interesting enough to keep me coming back to see the next episode. I’ve just ordered the third season. But, while I got it because of its reputation as one of the best TV shows ever made, I don’t find it nearly as compelling as, say, The Sopranos or even Breaking Bad (which is the other dramatic show I am currently watching in rotation with The Wire). It’s maybe because its focus is comparatively narrow.
I have neither read nor seen Game of Thrones, but from what I have heard it’s not hard to understand why it might be more popular.
Exactly. It’s not rocket science. You can get much better ratings with good writing and boobies than you can with good writing alone. It’s a dual threat:Announcer: The success of the show is linked to its two creative consultants: Author George R.R. Martin…
George R. R. Martin: I’m on-set to ensure that the show honors the spirit of my books.
Announcer: And Adam Friedberg, a 13-year old boy.
Adam Friedberg: I make sure there are lots of boobs in the show! http://gawker.com/5902076/snl-explains-the-nudity-in-game-of-thrones
Plus the in depth depiction of institutions that most cop shows aren’t remotely concerned with. Education, inner-city politics, unions, manufacturing. To me the classic formulaic cop show has the crime solved by the end of the episode, such as Law and Order. More sophisticated cop shows such as The Killing and The Bridge (both Scandinavian) focus on a single crime or set of crimes over a series, but still would never look at the entirety of a city in the way The Wire does.
I think HBO is also a bigger deal now than it was then - it was far from unknown, but shows like The Sopranos and The Wire did a lot for its reputation and for the reputation of dramas on cable in general - and there’s the whole social media thing. Nobody was tweeting about The Wire because Twitter didn’t exist. And it’s true that in addition to being bleak The Wire was tough to get into. It was a show that developed slowly and didn’t do a lot of things TV shows often do to make life easier for viewers. I think it’s more than worth it, but they made it tough sometimes.
The GoT audience is nearly half female; that helps with the social media buzz, and it means that it’s something that couples can watch and talk about together. My recollection is that The Wire’s audience skewed much more predominantly male.
Remember too that at its peak, The Wire was averaging more than 4 million viewers, which isn’t far off from where GoT is now.
I couldn’t get into The Wire. Then after reading the great praise on these boards I ordered it from Netflix to give it another try. I just fail to see what all the hubbub is about. Another cop show with average writing. After the first two episodes I pulled the plug and returned it.
Despite its good critical praise it might not be as appealing to mass audiences as GOT.
This is very common experience - I have a heard a legion of people say exactly the same thing ( including several that now praise it to the high heavens after giving it a second chance ). As Gangster Octopus noted it’s a tough, somewhat complex show to get into. This is neither a sneering put down of people that don’t care for it nor an indictment of the show itself - it’s just a fact that it is slow-going early on and not all of the quality of it is immediately evident on first exposure. It really is a bit like a slow-starting but ultimately very satisfying novel. I got hooked only because I was ill and off work for a couple of days and started watching them on On Demand out of boredom - the first few I was mildly interested, but sorta indifferent.
It does reward patient viewing, but I fully understand why not everybody wants to put in that much effort. And of course not everybody will enjoy it as a matter of taste. But I will say that in my case, I really have never cared for cop shows. Not even most good ones. From Hill Street Blues, to the hoards of CSI shows, to everything in between - I don’t much like them as a group. But I do love The Wire. It transcends the genre IMHO.
Yeah, I can’t remember where I read it but somebody said you need to make it through the first four episodes, before the quality starts to come out. I started it three times before finally getting the patience to watch it.
I think there are a lot of reasons, but I agree with this the most, or more generally - a lot of the difference in popularity is due to timing.
Also, are these shows really analogous, except that they both star Aidan Gillen? IMHO a better analogy is GoT:Rome, as both are period pieces with war and such. GoT had a higher budget, but I think at the time Rome was more niche-y. Although, if I am reading correctly, Rome premiered high in ratings but petered out, while GoT’s Nielsen ratings have increased each season.
My memory may be fuzzy, but I remember most of the media buzz for Game of Thrones appearing somewhere in the middle of the second season? Although it’s possible I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t hear about Emilia Clarke every 5 minutes.
If you watch only the first couple episodes, then you might be left with the impression that it’s just another police procedural, instead of a show that has more to do with Dickens than Law and Order. And if you’re white, the large focus on black street folk, and heavy use of ghetto vernacular, may have been off-putting if you place it within the context of a police procedural show, mainly because much of it is hard to understand. In that respect, if it had just begun airing this year, our more developed social media could have been holding our hands, helping us understand what was happening from the very beginning.
The Wire was a complicated show that takes a lot of effort in the beginning to follow. You need 4-5 episodes just to learn who everyone is (and on top of that each season introduces a whole new set of people). It was a show designed for the internet age that aired before that age really started.
On top of that, it is bleak, cynical and isn’t a genre show. It isn’t really even a cop show. It is about America in general and how it is crumbling apart.
I think if it were released today or even a few years ago it would have done better but it was never going to be a big hit.
I just want to be a counter voice for anyone who reads this post. I also have been close to Baltimore criminals, as well as many sad and fucked up drug dealers and criminals from all over the east coast, and I testify that many of them damn sure did sit around waxing philosophical about their Machiavellian power struggles. Many criminals I know and have known are extremely intelligent, very well read and far from being unable to communicate, many of them ooze with charm and can talk the skin off a snake. And some of them were dumb. And some were smart in some ways and dumb in others.
I’d also say a big part of it is Game of Thrones is good from the get go (the book being first certainly helped) where the Wire, like a lot of shows took time to find its footing. I don’t even bother with Season 1 of The Wire.
That how you get a lot of people saying “I gave it a chance but.. ::meh::.”
I think you see that a lot less with people who gave Game of Thrones a shot.
I think that AGOT benefited in large part from the popularity of the “Lord of the Rings” movies- they were immensely popular epic-scale fantasy sword and sorcery movies, and as far as I can remember, the next big-time fantasy project to come along is AGOT, even if 8 years later.
Cop/criminal/court procedure shows are a dime a dozen. Even at the time, you had several highly acclaimed shows competing with The Wire.
I remember thinking at the time that I didn’t really give a shit about a cop show set in Baltimore. I’ve seen cop shows, and I know that Baltimore was (is?) a shithole, and I really wasn’t interested, especially after hearing how bleak it was after a few episodes.
Beyond the joke, there’s something ha-ha-only-serious there.
Both shows are spinning around an axle of “everything and everyone is terrible, everybody’s fucked, if you think this has a happy ending you haven’t been paying attention”. Which is fine, excellent even. But the change in context make the difference with the similarity in content.
When everything is shit in dragon kingdom and everyone’s backstabbing each other or working at cross purpose in a continent-spanning feudal crab bucket ; that’s captivating.
When the same thing happens in Real US City, and the issues at hand feel very reminiscent of the ones plaguing you own and there’s no end in sight and it’s all spinning ever downwards ; that’s fucking depressing.
Don’t get me wrong, I love The Wire and re-watch it every so often. It’s aged beautifully (even though it’s made all the more depressing each year because… yup, same shit, different day).
But I don’t remember waiting on the next episode back then with the same trepidation and speculation as I do* GoT* episodes, nor was I rooting for or against anybody with the vehemence with which I love Varys or loathe Daenerys. It was a gripping show, a gut-punching show. Not a *fun *show, despite all the funny bits.
Nope, every single individual of a group that encompasses a wide variety of different lifestyles is exactly the same.
It’s just sort of a pet peeve of mine when someone from Holland or South Dakota tries to start telling me about the way things work in Baltimore because they saw The Wire. Which has actually happened to me. Do people ever do this with New Jersey and The Sopranos?
The communication dig was another pet peeve of mine. Every goddamn day I have to try to drag accurate information out of people who say things like “I seen them when they was walking to the store yesterday,” and it was driving me a little nuts today when I made that post. It’s always those same two mistakes, and it gets under my skin. I’m not a grammar nazi and I’m only a little snobbish, I swear. But those are extremely common words and very simple concepts. On the other hand, those errors are hardly the exclusive domain of criminals so I’ll end my little rant by apologizing to the good criminals of Baltimore for painting them with too broad of a brush.
). As Gangster Octopus noted it’s a tough, somewhat complex show to get into. This is neither a sneering put down of people that don’t care for it nor an indictment of the show itself - it’s just a fact that it is slow-going early on and not all of the quality of it is immediately evident on first exposure. It really is a bit like a slow-starting but ultimately very satisfying novel. I got hooked only because I was ill and off work for a couple of days and started watching them on On Demand out of boredom - the first few I was mildly interested, but sorta indifferent.