The Wire

I've re-written this 3 times - I still can't get across how much I enjoyed The Wire. I don't want to be that guy that gets excited about a tv show, but when I first saw The Wire in 2006 it genuinely blew my mind.
I don't want to sound all evangelical, but The Wire is truly the best series ever made in television history. At the least it's raised the bar for how television drama is made - at best it's thrilling, gripping, detailed, excellently perfromed by the actors, amazingly directed and produced, the scrpit is 10/10, heck - even the sound recording is mind blowing.

I love it.

The characters have been written with the sort of care and attention I've never seen before - and maybe won't again. I just finished season 5 and the prevailing character that cuts through all 5 series is Omar .

A black gay bounty hunting cowboy - fucking brilliant.

I don't mind the fact that (Sheffield born) Dominic West's performance as McNulty is, in comparison, fairly weak. He's a lynchpin - in the same way the King in a game of chess is actually a bit shit, but clamps the game together.
I think my favourite season (after lying in bed thinking about it for hours) is season 4. Season 2 a close run second. Season 4 pips it because it encompasses all that is great about the program in as far as it has many of the mainstay characters making big moves - where as 2 is more of a kind of off-shoot, albiet a brilliant one - with it's docks setting.
I know Charlie Brooker the (uk) tv pundit has said he wishes he'd never seen it and was watching it for the first time - I can see where he's coming from.

With that in mind I watched it all over again. There's so many layers of story it's hard to absorb everything in one watch anyway. It's like a big cake, a really good well made cake. With drugs, and politics, and guns, and shouting.

It's not hugely emotional, I don't think anyone cries in the whole 5 seasons (actually I think Ziggy might in s2). The men are men (Ziggy's a boy that thought he was a man). Faulty, rubbish getting things wrong, making mistakes kind of men - and I love it all the more for that. There's compassion certainly, Presbo in particular is amazing in season 4.






The comedy is downplayed but excellently done - from Bunks muttering and puking to Clay Davies 'SheeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET'

I'm making it sound blokey - it's not - Greggs is one of the best female characters ever written. Takes no shit - gives no shit. Gets on with being 'good po-lice'


It's hard to write coherantly about something you really love.


So excuse me if that's a load of bollocks.


Night x