The Wire

WARNING Contains a Season 5 spoiler!

This past couple of weeks I have finally caught up with the last two seasons of The Wire and was not disappointed apart from the fact that for me it has come to an end.

At first glance it could be taken as a simple tale of cops trying to take down a street drug organisation in the wastelands of West Baltimore using wire taps. This would be a major disservice to the breadth of vision demonstrated by the show's creators and writers; it is more of a detailed examination of inner city life in the US as seen from different perspectives of organisations and their members operating within it.

The stories of drug gangs, police departments, labour unions, city/state elected officials, city school systems and a local newspaper are all intertwined to varying degrees. The plots unfold slowly over the entire season or in some cases seasons, it comes across as more of a novel than a tv cop show.

It could never be described as an easy watch and is the antithesis of all the CSIs and L&Os where one or two plot lines are revealed and wrapped up in 42 minutes.

Background music is rare in the shows and only appears in context, rap music pounding in the dealers cars or that Pogue's song from yesterday when the police gather in an Irish bar for a wake for a dead colleague.

It also contains the most unlikely heroic figure ever to be seen in a screen drama, a stick up artist by the name of Omar Little who lives by a strong code and only targets drug dealers and enforcers and would never threaten an ordinary citizen. While ruthless in his pursuit of money and drugs he takes the time to bring his grandmother to church on a Sunday and is outraged when he is attacked doing this as her life has been threatened.

In this clip he is giving evidence against a drug enforcer accused of murdering a state witness and gives as good as he gets to the venal defence attorney.




Here he is pursuing his chosen line of business and this last clip shows him coming to the sort of end his life style made inevitable.

Cannot praise this show enough, the writing and the acting are superb and the depiction of the lives of the corner dealers feels very realistic – well worth catching on dvd.