The Wire

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.

But mock as I may, The Wire shines a light on unfair systems and societies that still exist.  This alone makes it important viewing.  Add in the great writing, performances and plot, alongside the breakout roles for Idris Elba (from those Sky adverts – how funny) and Dominic West, and you can’t help but conclude that you really should listen to everyone that tells you to watch something.

Girls

Whenever a programme starts with that little HBO interstitial where three letters signifying Home Box Office slowly appear on a background of grey fuzz, you know you’re in for a touch of quality.  It’s like the royal seal on a box of Weetabix (although I wouldn’t say that was my favourite cereal).  This is the home of The Wire, True Blood and, er, Sesame Street.  Thus, Girls came with high expectations.  This was compounded by inordinate fuss during its 2012 launch.  During a couple of trips to New York that year, its four lead cast members’ faces were plastered on every bench and phone box I strode past, gormlessly imagining I was in a boxset of my own, what with all the sidewalks, yellow taxis and ironic exclamations of “I’m walkin’ here!” in my best Brooklyn accent.

The internet whinged about nudity and nepotism.  But no TV show has ever needed to please everyone.  Where did all this expectation and entitlement come from?  If anything, we were mirroring exactly the behaviour at the heart and soul of Girls: selfishness.  The four main characters are each so obsessed with themselves that their friendships crash and burn along with most other elements of their lives.  This is real life.  It’s cruel.  I’m writing this because I want people to read it.  You’re reading it in case you can spot that it isn’t any good.  So, when a show is all over the news, everyone has something to say about what’s wrong with it.  If it doesn’t tick all our boxes correctly, then we feel we have the right to be outraged.

But this is all in the past now.  Six seasons of Girls exist out there and if you haven’t watched it, you should.  Later series slipped out with far less attention and the narratives therefore had a chance to blossom and mature with less scrutiny.  After all, everything is someone’s truth (even Bromans).  So let’s talk about Lena Dunham’s truth at the time of its inception: young people coming to terms with adulthood, an unfriendly city that gives you just enough love to keep you in its palm, recalibrating your expectations of what your life will be, wanting to be loved.  Sound familiar?  The comedy and the drama, therefore, come from the characters’ journeys through these truths and the fact they are inevitably at odds with each other.

So who the fudge are these people?:

Hannah Horvath

Hannah is the main girl of Girls, around whom most other girls in the show orbit.  This isn’t due to her magnetic charisma, but because she is raw AF.  She can’t have nice things because she ruins them.  Just when you think she has achieved compassion with someone, she comes out with something that reveals it’s all about her, no matter what.  We all know a Hannah, and we all are a Hannah.  Also, her clothes fall off almost constantly and we just need to make our peace with that.

Marnie Michaels

Growing up impossibly handsome, I can identify with what it’s like to be judged first on breath-taking looks.  Note the irony.  Marnie’s self-obsession is compounded by how others treat her, from a mum who just wants to be her cool friend to men who can’t believe she’ll go near them.  It’s nice to be pretty, but it clearly just leaves you as lost as the rest of us.

Jessa

I’m not putting the surname as I never noticed it once across all 62 episodes, so I can’t be pasting it out of Wikipedia now.  I never really got the purpose of Jessa.  She seems like a lost child from The Osbournes with her transatlantic drawl.  She gives me accent whiplash.  Jessa acts as a filter for the other characters’ wilder acts, the result of lost inhibitions.  I’m torn with saying she’s either the least interesting or the most enigmatic.

Shoshanna Shapiro

By far my favourite girl.  Every line and every word that comes out of her mouth is so well observed that you never want it to end.  She’s the sensible one with actual drive, though she goes through the same challenges that force her to question everything about herself.  I can only imagine how much fun Shosh was for Zosia Mamet to play (an actress who is unrecognisable in Mad Men).  Series 5, episode 3 where we get to see Japan through Shosh’s eyes is one of the most mesmerising and magical things I have ever seen.  I’m smiling as I think about it.

Officially speaking, these four are the actual Girls the titles refers to (I’ve decided).  In addition, there’s a deep and rich supporting cast of awful relations and equally damaged male love interests.  One is now even the naughty Jedi (or something) in the new Star Wars films.  In Girls, Adam Sackler is played by Adam Driver as a fairly grumpy man-child, so it’s great to see him doing the same thing with a light sabre.  But no, I’m just jealous – he’s a very exciting actor and you feel every emotion along with him throughout his relationships with Hannah and others.

But if Shosh has the best lines of any girl in the show, it’s Elijah Krantz who has the best of any boy.  While the girls seem to delude themselves regarding the extent of their self-obsession, Elijah owns his without apology.  Yet, he and Hannah somehow make a shared STI (HPV) seem like a friendship goal.

How can a show about selfishness be gratifying viewing?  I’ve just told you, it has the HBO logo thing at the start.  Plus, it’s only thirty minutes, New York looks beautiful throughout, the soundtrack never misses, it’s funny, it’s sad, it’s realistic and pure fantasy, and it doesn’t really do anything you expect it to.  That, and naked people.