Are you a fan of the HBO show The Wire? If not, why not? Believe the hype, it really is one of the best shows ever to grace our television screens. Authentic, brilliant writing, great acting and a wholly rewarding viewing experience, The Wire demands your attention and concentration and pays off in spades.If you are a fan of the show, I hope you've subscribed to the excellent companion podcast Wirecast, available on iTunes. Presented by Alex Hahn, who also does a very good Lost podcast, It Only Ends Once, Wirecast looks to document the show and act as a viewing companion as each podcast is devoted to a single episode, analysing the key characters, events and plot developments while also looking at the broader themes of this important show.
I have regularly contributed to the podcast, guested on one and will hopefully soon be guesting on another as we look at the season one finale, which I have rewatched this week.
The season followed a special police Detail tasked with making a case against a powerful drug gang in West Baltimore. They get some results but watching the closing minutes of the episode and it is clear that although convictions are forthcoming and the upper echelons of the police department consider the case a success, there is barely a dent made in the Barksdale drug operation. One of the lead detectives, McNulty, knows it and the deflation is evident on his face as he sits outside the courtroom while sentences are handed out inside. He thinks about the hard work relative to the results obtained, the lives affected, the lives lost. He sees nothing to celebrate.
The Detail is disbanded, its constituent officers reassigned to other departments, while the Barksdale gang is still fully functional and drugs are being sold.
Yet the higher ranks in the police department still consider it a success. They are interested in numbers and as far as they're concerned, 20 or so drug gang members, including the figurehead of the Barksdale gang, are now incarcerated. The fact that most will be out in a couple of years is irrelevant.
This highlights a key point of The Wire. It depicts, throughout its five seasons, broken establishments. The police department for example: the commissioners want to see convictions, period. Whatever they may be. Arrests. Successful prosecutions. Numbers. While you have the lower ranking officers on the street who know things haven't changed and are totally frustrated that cases are brought prematurely just for the sake of numbers when a bit of extra time and work, bigger fish could fry, or bigger charges brought.
The estalishments depicted in the show all share one thing: they are all dysfunctional in some fundamental way and you have a core of hardworking people doing the best they can to do a good job despite this.
Season one is a great introduction to the show. If you give it a try, don't be put off by the lack of nice neat episodes with a "case of the week". A case spans a season and the show rewards the long term viewer. The brilliance of the show will only become apparent when you view it as a whole and it could be a few episodes before you start to see this.
But watch it you must!
