Artsculture

Still Plugged into 'The Wire'

Cop series is simply the best thing on TV.

By Steve Burgess, 15 Sep 2006, TheTyee.ca

The Wire

'Makes you care.'

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I spent a big whack of money this week. Bought me a Shaw digital box with a whole lot of programming space, partly in preparation for the new season, partly because my nearly-obsolete VCR is on the fritz again, and partly so I could get the premium Movie Channel outlets. And that in turn was largely on account of one exciting development -- season four of The Wire started this week.

I've written about The Wire before, and if I come off somewhat like a guy in a bad suit standing on your doorstep holding a religious pamphlet, I apologize. But I implore you, brothers and sisters. Listen while you still can. I proclaim before the Sacred Altar of Gilligan that thou shalt have no other television like The Wire. Amen.

Fans of The Wire tend toward zealotry, simply because the Baltimore-based cop series is something of a TV miracle. Creator David Simon wrote the books that provided the source material for the acclaimed series Homicide: Life on the Street, and the HBO miniseries The Corner. But The Wire is Simon's masterpiece. Many of the series' writers are novelists, and Simon has said that each season of The Wire is designed more like a novel than like episodic TV. Simon once defended the show's structure by citing Melville's Moby Dick, pointing out that nothing much seems to be happening in the opening chapters of that classic either. But it all unfolds in time, and when it does the payoff is all the richer. Compared to the usual slam-bang cop-show pace, The Wire can at times seem glacial (which is why DVDs are a good way to gorge on the show, if you don't mind waiting forever -- season three is only now on shelves after a two-year wait). But the complexity, the richness of the storytelling, is probably unprecedented in American television.

Each season is brand new

The Wire provides dramatic developments and great, larger-than-life characters like the gangster-raiding gangster Omar Little, the drug lord turned real-estate mogul Stringer Bell, and the bedraggled, amiable street informer known only as Bubbles. While it demands patience and careful attention, it is still thoroughly entertaining TV. But what truly sets the show apart is the unflinching, unsentimental depiction of police politics, civic politics, the complex underground economic system of the narcotics trade and, above all, what Simon calls "the frippery of the war on drugs." The Wire provides no happy endings -- far from it. But the results of all the political and police manoeuvring have the depressing ring of truth. Arrests are made, asses are covered and players change. Little else does. And still The Wire makes you care about the people in the trenches who struggle to make progress. It also tells compelling stories on both sides of the law.

There have been scenes in past episodes that I felt did not work. But I can count them on one hand while picking my nose. The Wire has a unified, sure-handed feel from episode to episode and year to year. Seasons one to three are all available on DVD, and it's a good idea to start at the beginning.

Each season tells a whole new story, albeit using some of the same characters. Season four will follow a group of inner-city kids as they go through the Baltimore school system. Some will inevitably intersect with the cops we've come to know through the first three seasons.

There are other HBO series that might inspire a subscription to the premium channels. The toga opera Rome is fun -- not exactly weighty, but it does show an admirable regard for historical fact while cooking up its potboiler intrigues. Eventually The Sopranos will launch into its denouement, and Entourage has its fans as well.

But there is nothing else on TV like The Wire, a point that is only underlined by pale, sad imitations like The Shield. If you can't afford to buy that spiffy new cable box, rent the DVDs. You'll find that the most compelling drama being made today is on television.

Steve Burgess reviews the screen, big and small, for The Tyee. [Tyee]

Steve Burgess is a freelance writer and broadcaster -- ambulance chaser, really -- who writes for The Tyee on topics of travel, culture or stuff.

14 Comments:

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  • cosmo

    5 years ago

    Comments on "Still Plugged into 'The Wire'"

    I've never seen the show.

    However, I can report that in previously the Slocan Valley's own Pablo Schreiber played the character Nick. I don't think he's in the most recent season(s?), but this year he was nominated for a Tony Award for his work on Broadway's "Awake and Sing".

    Way to go Pablo.

  • grw

    5 years ago

    Quote:
    Bought me a Shaw digital box with a whole lot of programming space, partly in preparation for the new season, partly because my nearly-obsolete VCR is on the fritz again, and partly so I could get the premium Movie Channel outlets.

    And wrote about it partly because you'll be able to write it off on your taxes. Smart.

  • Elliot

    5 years ago

    will definitely make a point of checking it out after that endorsement. saw 'deadwood' for the first time 2 weeks ago and was absolutely blown away. 'rescue me' is also well worth watching.

  • Bobb999

    5 years ago

    For entertainment now, I prefer YouTube videos posted by the public, including the occasional interesting TV clip, instead of TV itself.

    I feel much better informed now , relying on the vast and varied information, news,and opinion sources available online (including the Tyee), and watching little TV fare.

    Corporate TV as we know it, owned and operated by mega media companies, often with agendas to "manage the message", through ommissions, falsehoods, and spin (hello CanWest), is on the way out.

    Good riddance.

  • godsChild

    5 years ago

    Quote:
    Corporate TV as we know it, ... through ommissions, falsehoods, and spin (hello CanWest), is on the way out.

    I know huh? Everywhere you turn on the Internet; they're all saying that. It's like a mantra for technofetishist blockheads or something. It's great to see the message is getting through. Incidentally, it seems to me that at least half the crap you're apparently proud of watching comes from reactions to television/radio/movies. Without "corporate media" in all its forms to bounce off of, most of the crap on the Internet would dry up and blow away tomorrow. You know, like having an article about a "corporate media" TV show on which to hang your comments ...

  • bob the cat

    5 years ago

    Elliot

    Just discovered "Deadwood" as well.
    Going to get the box set I think..got some episodes from the local library. Really excellent T.V.
    There is a lot of crap on T.V. but alot of good stuff too. Even some of the ads are really good..little stories unto themselves..the U.S. Open had some incredibly creative ads.

  • Bobb999

    5 years ago

    dogsChild:
    I just wish Canada had a website equivalent of the US based mediamatters.org, a media watchdog, which regularly exposes the many omissions, falsehoods and spin found in the US mainstream media. It's rather breathtaking, though I make no fetish about keeping track. I'm content to check in only occasionally.

    If you think the MSM is doing such a fine job, above reproach, how is it, according to Gallup, that half of Americans still think Saddam is linked to 911, and an even greater percentage believe WMDs were found in Iraq in the period leading up to the war? As you may know, both ideas have been thoroughly and repeatedly discredited. Where do people get such
    wrong headed ideas, I wonder? I think you can guess where.

    Here in Canada, Canwest Global especially, is a disgrace to journalism, with the evil Asper twins micromanaging the message on Israel (ultra hawkish, anti-Arab), on Harper (very pro [it used to be Chretien]),and other issues, firing journalists and editors who dare go off message and express a view contrary to the official line. Is this freedom of the press?
    Don't forget these guys own both Vancouver dailies, many community papers, plus their flagship National Pravda - I mean Post -, TV and radio stations - all are expected to toe the line, or else.

    If there is lots of criticism of the MSM on the net, it's because there are a lot of MSM falsehoods that need challenging or correcting, falsehoods that used to go unchallenged and uncorrected. The internet, thus, helps level the playing field, and allows folks to be better informed than ever. There are many cases of inaccurate reporting in the MSM that, due to internet criticism, lead to corrections, sometimes apologies being issued. You think this not in the public interest?

  • G West

    5 years ago

    For once, I agree wholeheartedly with Steve Burgess. The Wire is ... so bloody good it's hard to describe. It captures you like live theatre sometimes can, with raw and seemingly genuine emotion. As Burgess says, it's not only the cops but the politicians and the kids and the crooks and their families and it's all interwoven with gritty Baltimore neighbourhoods and greed and power and pain and love. Best thing on TV - easily. You can almost smell the blood and the puke and the piss and yet you can't turn away. There is a scene in season 2 where the residents of a ghetto tenement shower a police car on the street below with bottles and stones while three rookie officers lose their cool entirely that is unforgettable. Watch for the street addict scrounging bottles and bits of salvaged metal in a shopping cart – as real as any of the folks I encounter here in Victoria every week and portrayed with an unapologetic grace and dignity – never a hint of condescension.

    The first three seasons, apart from the Sopranos (which has seemed to me to be going downhill), it was the only continuing series worth watching on TV. In the ad-free format shown on Bell or Shaw (Starchoice) Satellite TV it is un-missable. If you haven't seen any of it, rent or buy the DVDs and watch it whole - don't wait for it to appear cut-up on some commercial channel as is now happening with Deadwood on History Channel.

    Deadwood's good, mind you, but it has none of the immediacy and 'reality' that the Wire provides. In fact, the diction is almost Shakespearean. In an age when most commercial TV is devoted to pseudo-reality, the Wire is the truest thing available.

    Don't miss it.

  • jtothemfk

    5 years ago

    It's so easy to throw out blanket statements about TV being shit and isolating and pandering and derivative and so forth. The comments always seem to come from those who haven't watched or owned a TV (except to watch arthouse films and docs, of course -nothing against either, btw) for years. There's such an undeserved sense of self-righteousness about these folks. Not everyone who owns a tellie and rents cable uses it to puree their brains. It's comments like those (chalk full of comforting stereo types) that give any kind of weight to those like Maestro and Nightbloom when they weigh in on the supposed simple mindedness and self-aggrandizing hyporcrisy of "lefties". I caught one episode quite by accident the other night (never had heard of it before) and thought it was brilliant. It was the one where the city councillor who wants to be mayor receives a guided tour of the getto and the ghetto kid gangs through piss baloons around and mayhem ensues. And yes, there is artistic grace and poetry and gritty realism wonderfully conveyed. Multi-layered. Brilliant. Bobb999, we agree on many things but not the fact you see a devil around every corner.

    jk

  • Alcibiades

    5 years ago

    jtothemfk

    Yep, that was a good one too. In fact, I think you'll find they all are. Marvellous TV.

  • BobbyPeru

    5 years ago

    Most people who disrespect today's television simply don't understand the state of the art. The avalanche of channels means that there is a wide variance of quality- from the assinine to the simply incredible. Like Sopranos, Wire, Shield, etc. You just have to sort it out.

    Today, television is offering better stories than mainstream movies. More freedom in the former with more distribution methods translate into a higher demand for content, which means riskier scripts. In movies, the opposite has occurred so studios are compelled to take less risks and the quality suffers.

    The saddest thing is that Canadian television hasn't improved along with US quality. Where are the edgy Canadian TV cop shows... a Canadian equivalent of the Shield let's show. Or a show about the murky underground of the marijuana trade? Canadians are simply too PC, wimpy to take on tough shows.

  • Alcibiades

    5 years ago

    We used to do good, even great, TV serial drama but it's at least a generation ago now. Things like Wojeck with John Vernon. Da Vinci had its moments but became too formulaic at the end. Maybe all we're capable of is slapstick skit comedy right now. With such a joke government you can’t expect much more than bad comedy routines anyway.

  • bob the cat

    5 years ago

    I`ll have to check this one out. I know I was "wired" on "Homicide: Life on the Street"
    I need one of these boxes to get it?
    Not long ago discovered " The Office" BBC version...brilliant...I`ve heard the American version is also good but haven`t viewed it as yet.
    G..did you mean Deadwood or The Wire when referring to Shakespearean dialogue? I`ve read where the Deadwood creators had intended a Shakespearean tone to go with the burnished sepia look.

  • G West

    5 years ago

    BTC
    'Deadwood' for the Shakespearean sensibility - obviously intentional. As far as I know you either need to subscribe to a digital package or get a satellite service to access them first run - and without commercials - if you buy expressvu (Shaw's starchoice may be the same deal) you also get to watch the Daily Show 3 hours earlier than you get it on comedy channel here - which is an advantage when you get up as early in the morning as I do.

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