I mentioned in a thread the other day that The Good Place is probably the best television show in terms of maintaining quality start to finish. But I wasn’t including pay-per-view in that assessment. The Wire, from beginning to end, is absolutely excellent. It is up there with the first season of Twin Peaks, with the best of Breaking Bad, the Sopranos, etc. Quite probably the best ever.
As for David Simon, have you watched Homicide? I don’t think Simon was directly involved with the show, but it was developed from his book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, and it is well worth watching also.
The thing about The Wire that I think people overlook is that each season is about a different part of Baltimore–crime/police, unions, education, etc. By the time you’ve been through all 5 seasons, you have an image of the entire city in a way I don’t think has ever been accomplished anywhere else. The closest I’ve ever come to it is in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Autumn of the Partriarch.
The wire also accidentally document how technology change our society with stuff like phones.
Is too bad it don’t document further or we would see what the internet and these things change society even further.
It also show that sometimes a cop is a thug on the right side of the law, but still a thug. But thats not a negative prediquement of police forces…the average person is a thug withouth power to act like that, and it takes some brain and inclination to be different.
Also worth mentioning is that David Simon’s two books, Homicide and The Corner (the latter co-written with Ed Burns), are excellent pieces of non-fiction and anyone who enjoyed The Wire should consider reading them.
I appreciate this, in that I’ve repeatedly bounced off the Wire and always wondered what the big deal was. That video makes it clear that while this is a phenomenal work, it’s not one I’m likely to enjoy actually watching, which is what I’d long suspected.
The show is pretty old by now, but after watching many critically acclaimed TV series between then and now I feel that no show has gotten close to The Wire. Either in terms of overall quality or the unique combination of ambition and depth.
With that said, all fans of The Wire should watch the miniseries Show Me a Hero by Simon and co immediately. It’s really good. I also really enjoyed Treme, The Deuce, Generation Kill, and the Plot Against America. But Show Me a Hero is, in my view, the only one that gets close.
The only show I routinely hold up along with The Wire as the best it gets is the first season of Twin Peaks. Not only brilliant, but enormously influential on later TV.
I should probably add to that list The Good Place now. A very different type of show, but often brilliant also.
For me, Breaking Bad is close as a complete series with amazing story arcs, dialog, acting. But, yeah, there has been a ton of great serialized TV since then and what it did has rarely been equaled. I think it wins out because of absolute authenticity.
The Good Place is also a brilliant series and there are few sitcoms that interest me any longer. However, my brain cannot compare drama to comedy. It short circuits.
I assume you are referring to Twin Peaks here. It is just such a shame that the second season was so weak in comparison to the first. And then the HBO thing was so Lynch-indulgent.
One thing I really enjoy about HBO series is that no one is safe. Major character? Eh, he/she is dead. There’s no real suspense when a major character in a network (or most cable) show is hanging by their fingernails to the rail of a helicopter while the bad guys are standing over them with assault rifles. HBO series? In more than one series, such as Treme, obviously GOT, etc. my wife and I would look at each other and say, OK, somehow he’s coming back, no way they killed HIM, he’s the center of the show! Nope, he’s not sleeping, that’s one dead parrot.
I started the Wire a couple of times but my wife could never really get into it, even though we’d watch Wendell Pierce in a remake of Happy Days; we love that guy. It’s one of my “when my wife is out of town” shows and she’s out of town so I just happen to have restarted it.
The Sopranos is my close second behind The Wire for best TV. That beats Breaking Bad any day, as well as Mad Men (another personal favorite).
I wish I could’ve stuck with Twin Peaks but that first season was already balanced on a knife edge for me between enthralling and corny, so I bailed immediately on season two. It’s influential and certainly amazing, but I couldn’t seriously include something so wildly inconsistent that high on a favorites list.
Has anyone seen City on a Hill? And if it compares to The Wire in any way? It took me a while, but The Wire is for me also one of the best shows ever, and this looks kinda like it.
You know this was me as well. I enjoyed season 1, but was a bit mystified as to all the rave reviews including from my siblings. But I enjoyed season 2 immensely and it just kept growing on me. I am currently midway through season 5; I don’t know what happens but I’m feeling afraid someone is not going to miss the King before the end.
