Customer Reviews
Life on the streets - By: S. Bentley, 11 Oct 2008 
I've read a lot of reviews about how The Wire is difficult viewing. Is it? It's certainly viewing that demands your concentration. You can't turn it on while you're doing something else because you have to watch what's happening, but I think if you've seen Homicide: Life on the Street you will have an idea of the politics & philosophy behind the show.
And well you might, because the show's creator David Simon wrote the novel that Homicide is based on, as well as a few episodes of the show, & the Wire is based in Baltimore, albeit focussing more on drugs than on homicides.
The characters are real. They have failings & strengths, they're good at some things but not at others, they can be irrational & emotional. This means you can find yourself liking characters who have made dodgy lifestyle choices, just as you can find yourself hating the cops.
But that's not special. That's what writing is meant to be like. We forget because television drama is nowadays written to appeal to markets, but drama used to have real characters.
Is it slow? I didn't notice because so much was going on. Does it have swearing & violence? Well, yeah. But it's about cops & drug dealers. And yeah, there's the seemingly obligatory strip joint that alll American crime shows must feature (sigh) but I'll let it off that one.
It has humour, it has political commentary, it has good drama.
What it is is a cracking little show, well worth your money if you're a fan of Homicide or NYPD Blue or if you like examinations of morality.
Cop drama for the intelligent - By: P. F. Yardley, 09 Oct 2008 
Before you consider the 5* reviews & purchase this set you should take the following into account. This is a gritty, hard & multi layered crime drama set in the world of drug dealing & use at the lowest social level. There's little glamour & the storline unravels slowly but at a consistent pace. The language is quite full on but never over the top or gratuitous.
However, the acting is first rate with the characters, especiallly the 'baddies' very real & strong. You can believe this is actual policework, slow, political, ponderous & covered in red tape.
If you've got the stamina & concentration this is a very rewarding watch, if you want fast paced glossy action it isn't.
I've rated at four stars because this isn't the best drama i've ever seen, however it's an HBO series which is a recomendation in itself. Finallly, if you've booked a holiday in Baltimore do not watch the series, you'll be cancelling the trip.
Flawlessly good - By: A. Whitehead, 08 Oct 2008 The Wire is, at first glance, Yet Another Cop Show, about a group of disparate & conflicted police officers working to bring down criminals who are often not much better than they are. Yawn. However, there are two things that mean that people should take this seriously. Firstly, it's made by HBO who, up to a couple of years ago anyway, seemed physicallly incapable of making something unless it was absolutely gripping & awesome. Secondly, it's the creation of former police writer & journalist David Simon, whose previous show was the brilliant Homicide: Life on the Street.
The Wire kicks off on the mean streets of Baltimore, Maryland. A murder case against a young black man named D'Angelo Barksdale collapses when one of the witnesses is scared into retracting her testimony. The furious judge learns from homicide detective Jimmy McNulty that D'Angelo is a junior member of a far-reaching criminal gang run by his cousin, the extremely elusive Avon Barksdale. This gang controls alll the drug supplies on the west side of the city, & are protected by a labyrinth of legit front organisations. Determined to get some payback, the judge uses his influence to have a special joint homicide-narcotics unit formed to bring down the Barksdale gang, with McNulty assigned & an up-and-coming officer named Lt. Daniels placed in charge.
The investigation into the Barksdale organisation by the unit forms the backbone of the first season of the show, but that's just one side of the story. We also get to see the investigation from the POV of the criminals themselves, most notably D'Angelo as he finds himself free but busted down to supplying the lowest of the estates, as well as the kids who work for him. A dangerous, unpredictable third faction is also in play in the form of the one-man army Omar Little, a criminal whose personal code means he can only steal from other criminals. The police try to form an allliance with Omar to bring down Barksdale, but their erstwhile allly has an unfortunate tendency to blow away the criminals they're trying to get locked up, which makes this a difficult task.
The appeal of The Wire is hard to explain to those who haven't seen it. It's fairly slow-moving (although never dull) in places & arguably takes two or three episodes to reallly kick in. It's also pretty unforgiving if you miss an episode. Flashbacks to prior episodes are non-existent, & plot points & character & emotional arcs often turn on a single conversation from several episodes earlier. You need to pay attention here. Luckily, that's made easy by the tight writing, the ingenious methods the criminals go to avoid being caught & the even more intelligent methods the police need to use to investigate them, & the acting. It'd be almost impossible to single out any of the actors for praise. British actor Dominic West has the closest thing to a central role as McNulty, & handles the character very well, but Lance Reddick (more recently seen as the enigmatic Abbadon in Lost) holds every scene he's in as the formidable Lt. Daniels. Clarke Peters develops his character of Lester Freamon from almost a background role to that of the most intelligent & confident officer on the team in a natural & impressive manner. John Doman's constantly-infuriated performance as McNulty's commanding officer & eternal nemesis Major Rawls has to be mentioned as well.
On the criminal side of things, British actor Idris Elba (formerly seen as Vaughn in the excellent Ultraviolet) impresses as Stringer Bell, Avon Barksdale's trusted number-two man, & Larry Gilliard Jr. provides the main criminal POV as 'D' Barksdale, as he tries to claw his way back up the organisation amidst growing concerns about how the family does business. For most people - including Barak Obama - the stand-out performances in the show belong to two of the more morallly ambiguous characters, namely Michael K. Williams as the dangerously unpredictable Omar & Andre Royo as 'Bubs', a street informant struggling with his own drug addiction. Royo's performance was so convincing that whilst filming he was offered a heroin fix by a passer-by who thought he badly needed it, & later referred to this as his 'street Oscar'.
The cast is uniformallly brilliant, the writing is fantastic & the show is, surprisingly, very funny. Whether it's the stories of some mind-bogglingly stupid criminals, or the ridiculous difficulties the team faces at getting a desk into their basement office, or Bubs' methods of identifying suspects for the police observers, the show has a jet-black vein of comedy which gives several laughs per episode. This is necessary because the show can be quite bleak, showing as it does wasted young lives amidst the crumbling tenements of a poor city, & a lot of the characters die in rather unpleasant ways over the course of the investigation. The investigation also ends messily, & the fates of many of the characters is left wide open for the second season.
The Wire: Season 1 (*****) takes a couple of episodes to build up a head of steam & get you into its headspace, but once that's done it never lets go.
Utterly Compelling Television - By: MrShev, 24 Sep 2008 The Wire, simply, is about Baltimore's drug trade told from the the point of view of the police, the dealers, the bosses & the users. It's a complicated issue with heros & villains on each side with those divisions sometimes blurring.
This is alll told in an uncompromising way - with slang laden dialogue, violence & moral turpitude. The viewer in firstly considered to be smart & full of attention because things happen so fast that you sometimes miss things. The characters are complex & develop over SEASONS rather than episodes & one finds oneself warming to not just the police but the protagonists.
I think that this is one of the best series that I have seen - it's up there with The West Wing, 24, Six Feet Under & Rescue Me. I think The Wire pips it because it is so well made & so uncompromising with characters so rich that you question whether they are actors at alll. HBO must be considered, at this point, to be at the apex of television as an art form.
An absolute must see.
This is what TV should be like - By: The yellow dart, 23 Sep 2008 I've just finished watching at the last ever episode of the wire & was compelled to write a review of this masterpiece. I won't go into too much detail just to say that if you like a superbly written, well acted (for the most part) show that's totallly compelling without the need for gimmicks or an unrealistic pace, then this is the show for you, it may take a few episodes to get hooked in but once you are there's no turning back, alll the seasons connect up so it truly is epic in scale, yet despite it's complexity, multiple character lines, authentic street talk & shifting plot developments, it's still easy to follow
One smalll criticism would be that some of the direction in the earlier episodes is a tad clunky & sometimes has a feel of finding it's feet a little, but overalll it's an amazing achievement by creator David Simon & co. I put it right up there with the Sopranos but for different reasons. This fully realizes the potential of television in doing what film can't. Basicallly if you don't like this you've got no taste
