The Wire

The Wire is a cop show on steroids. It is brilliant & daring in scope. Calling The Wire a cop show may be massively underselling it's value. Generally, I can't stand cop shows. They bore me with their linear development. Spoon-feeding of information is the usual pattern. Followed by the inevitable arrest of the bad guy. Couldn't care less. The Wire is something very different.


The Wire combines multiple viewpoints. It is a dissection of the roles that certain people have chosen/must outwardly display. The inevitable corruption exposed by this is the greatest strength of The Wire. It pulls no punches. It does not glorify any particular profession in this urban quagmire. Season 1 purely concerns the 'drug trade'. An excellent example of ideology gone horribly wrong - the War on Drugs. I believe that even if one stands on the side of the War on Drugs, one may learn valuable lessons. As a method of rising above poverty/anonymity, it is a peerless path. It offers the quickest route to money & power. The risks are many. However, in a culture that supposedly holds the ideal of individual autonomy & enterprise as its headstone - a crippling hypocrisy is revealed by The Wire.

The dialogue is at times very hard to follow. In particular, the street language & it's dialects. The reward for learning the language is immense. It allows the characters to express complexity in simple terms. Also, in a concise manner. The storyline can also appear too weighty. Again, the reward for comprehension is in itself sufficient. If confusion appeared, I was happy to drop that story arc & concentrate elsewhere. I had total faith that I would understand enough and be able to connect the threads when necessary. In short, any other approach is piecemeal & insulting. Any other approach leads to predictability, linearity & one-time viewing. All highly negative qualities. The Wire deftly avoids all of these pitfalls.

The Wire is "really about the American city, and about how we live together. It's about how institutions have an effect on individuals, and how whether you're a cop, a longshoreman, a drug dealer, a politician, a judge or a lawyer, you are ultimately compromised and must contend with whatever institution you've committed to." David Simon - head writer & creator.


STARRING: Dominic West, John Doman, Idris Elba, Frankie Faison, Larry Gilliard, Jr., Wood Harris, Deirdre Lovejoy, Wendell Pierce, Lance Reddick, Andre Royo, Sonja Sohn, Chris Bauer, Paul Ben-Victor, Clarke Peters, Amy Ryan, Aidan Gillen, Jim True-Frost, Robert Wisdom, Reg E. Cathey, Clark Johnson, Tom McCarthy, Seth Gilliam, Domenick Lombardozzi, J. D. Williams, Michael Kenneth Williams, Corey Parker Robinson, Chad L. Coleman, Jamie Hector, Glynn Turman, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Neal Huff, Jermaine Crawford, Tristan Wilds, Michael Kostroff, Felicia Pearson, Michelle Paress, Isiah Whitlock, Jr.

WRITERS : David Simon, Ed Burns, David Mills, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, William F. Zorzi, Chris Collins


DIRECTORS: Joe Chappelle, Ernest Dickerson, Joy and Scott Kecken, Dan Attias, Agnieszka Holland, Seith Mann, Dominic West, Anthony Hemingway, Clark Johnson