There was a time when people would refuse to speak to you if
you weren’t watching The Wire. It was a remarkable achievement, as it wasn’t
exactly readily available in a primetime terrestrial slot. Between 2002 and 2008, when its five seasons
first aired, the viewing population was just getting their minds around the
fact that you didn’t have to wait for a channel to schedule your shows,
checking the TV guide magazine and asking your dad if he could set the VCR,
even though he never revealed throughout your whole childhood that he didn’t actually
know how to do this and you mindlessly accepted his apologies for failing to
record anything properly. Or was that
just me?
It just showed that quality will find an audience, though
this quality didn’t find me till around 2014.
Living in a Brixton boys’ house share, I needed to avoid the evening’s
football viewing, as the sound of fans chanting throughout a match makes me
feel both seasick and afraid of being lynched at the same time. As the account controller of our Sky box, I
was able to fire up Sky Go on the laptop. The service was unreliable, but my scrolling
brought me to The Wire. I’d told friends
for years I would eventually get around to it.
Now it was time to follow up.
My first response was to be appalled at how dated the show
looked. 2002 was a long time before
2014. Around twelve years for any maths
fans out there. The aspect ratio was
tiny. It wasn’t HD. They had dated clothing. How dare they? I was expecting sexy police drama with
nerve-touching social commentary. There wasn’t
even a conventionally attractive cast member.
What kind of TV show was this?
Then I remembered a former dear housemate had tried to sit
down and watch episode one of series one with me many years before. I had been instantly put off by the claim
that “everyone says it’s really good.”
Everyone is normally wrong. I sat
through the episode but couldn’t find anything special. Yet, somehow, in 2014, I managed to re-watch,
and then carried on. And on. And on.
The point, therefore, is that the characters and plot
transcend how much technology has dated the production of that first
series. And pretty quickly, I rolled through
from season to season, where the resolution picked up and my modern
expectations were met with a more tolerable picture. I mean, it was hardly a historical artefact.
Each series cycles through a different element of life,
crime and punishment in the city of Baltimore, with the show’s name coming from
the first series’ drug-busting focus, with a group of misfit cops trying to tap
dealers’ phones in order to gather evidence.
Subsequent series deal with the city’s port, schools, politics and the
media, with the police there throughout.
As such, the transition between series is particularly satisfying, as
you are starting a whole new and fairly separate chapter.
The main conclusion you draw is that Baltimore is
terrifying. But you’ll also want to
visit. The only person I know who’s been
is the very former housemate who tried to watch the first episode with me. He used to have anxiety each winter from not
feeling Christmassy enough in the run up to the big day, prescribing himself
festive jumpers and excessive flat decorations in order to address the
situation. If he can survive the mean
streets of Omar Little
and Stringer Bell,
then anyone can. Sorry to shatter the
illusion, though I don’t think he dealt any crack.
What else? Half the
cast seems to be British. In fact, you’ll
constantly be recognising people from other shows, particularly in roles that
are incongruous with their Wire characters.
I kept expecting Michael Lee
(played by Tristan Wilds)
in series four suddenly to give the Dixon
Wilson chuckle synonymous with his 90210 character. Too much of the show was taken up by bars
full of cops singing Irish funeral shanties.
Bunk Moreland remains
one of my favourites, if only for his response of “shiiii-iiiit” to situations.
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