The Wire Season 1-3
The Wire (IMDb/Wikipedia) is a drama-series around the drug and crime-scene in Baltimore, Maryland. It shows both sides, the life of the police and criminals, their work, how they deal with problems and their organizations. For example the police has to deal with the bureaucracy whereas the criminals have to keep up there drug-traffic and defend themselves against revival groups.
The show is kept realistically. There aren’t such things as “endless-zoom” on blurry photos, ultra-high-end-tool and fancy, beeping, flashy computer-applications etc. It’s the pure opposite of CSI =). There is no “über”-detective which just finds out everything. The criminals have to deal with the their own rivalry and the police and therefore they try to find ways to avoid evidences. The Wire also explores the social-networks of both groups and their connections with the political system etc.
It’s not easy to follow the story, because there are a lot people involved. There are different groups following there own business which makes it difficult to follow the plot. Sometimes the show even digs into the private life of some people. The story is stretched over a season. So it doesn’t has a closed episode-structure. If you miss one episode, you’re missing a part of the story. Or if you even try the jump into a random episode, you’ve no idea what’s the episode is about. However it even gets more complex, because a fresh season just continues the a lot of the story line of the last season.
Summarized, the show is extremely special, because it’s kept realistic an develops its story in slow-motion so it tends to get boring. The show isn’t design to just watch an episode and have fun. So on one hand I like the show because its so different than an usual TV-series, on the other hand its a drama on sleeping pills.
I’ll may watch season 4 and 5 soon. I’m quite impressed, that HBO produced that many seasons, because I think the show doesn’t really succeed commercially.
Star-O-Meter:
(3.5/5)