CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 03/30/07

What the Hell is The Wire?
Or:
Why You Should Be Watching
One of the Best Shows on Television

By matthew reynolds

Seemingly breaking all the rules of cop shows, David Simon's The Wire—with its novelistic approach to plot, sharp dialogue, and ambivalent characters, is anything but a "procedural."

Gathered around an array of recording devices and playback equipment, a team of Baltimore police lean in to listen to a drug deal unfolding over a pay telephone they've bugged—until a senior detective flips a switch and cuts off the sound; he explains that it is illegal to listen in on a conversation, unless they're certain that one of the voices belongs to the suspects for which they have warrants. They'll need to post a man on a rooftop to make sure. A young cop throws up his hands in anger, declaring "This is bullshit!" and insisting that he can't operate this way. The older detective turns him and calmly explains to the rookie, "Detective, this right here—this is the job. What kind of work were you expecting?"

That scene, in the sixth episode of the first season of The Wire, sums up what the ground-breaking police show is all about: the drudgery and routine, the false leads, the long hours, or, even worse, no overtime—with the realistic struggle of everyday police work. It's a world of dashed hopes and only occasional victories. But despite the absolute authenticity—no rock music plays over the forensics work, and most of the offices are fluorescent-lit cubicles instead of high-tech laboratories bathed in moody ambers and blues—the series is stunningly entertaining.

Chalk it up to the perseverance and conviction of series creator David Simon.

Simon was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, covering the police beat for 12 years. He saw first-hand the everyday grind experienced by police, city officials, and the men, women and children with whom they tussled. Most important, all puns aside, he saw that their world was anything but black and white. Fascinated, and eager to tell a more complete story than the column inches of a daily newspaper would allow, Simon turned his experiences into a book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Soon Hollywood came calling, in the form of producer and director Barry Levinson, who adapted Simon's gritty police stories for the 1993 Emmy-winning television series of similar name (Homicide: Life on the Streets), which ran for seven seasons on NBC. Simon was asked to write some episodes, and his television career was born.

Simon moved on to an HBO dramatic miniseries, The Corner, based another book of his (The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood co-written by former Baltimore Detective Ed Burns, which offered a bleak look at drugs and their destructive effect on a poverty-stricken community and its youth. That show and its critical success led to The Wire. Debuting in 2002 on HBO to overwhelming positive reviews, viewership slowly grew until the show developed a devoted following.

What may have worked against The Wire initially was the sheer glut of police shows on television. With every major network filling primetime with acronym-laced procedurals, sporting flashy visuals and beautiful leads, The Wire may have seemed like just another show with pissed-off cops leaning on witnesses in interrogation rooms. Dominic West (seen as the traitorous politician Theron in this spring's 300) and Wendell Pierce play the lead detectives, bolstered by Sonja John, Clarke Peters, Lance Reddick, and Idrsi Elba, and an eclectic, and expanding, ensemble of characters.

Viewers quickly caught on that The Wire may have looked like any other cop show at a distance, but upon closer inspection, was anything but typical. What's startling about The Wire are the ways it contrasts with just about every other show on television. Whereas most shows portray a police world of black and white, The Wire stands firmly in a world of shifting shades of gray. Cops want to do the right thing, but they also want their overtime—if they don't get it, they leave early. Drug dealers—usually portrayed on TV as strung out and reckless—are often portrayed on this show as being as smart or smarter than the police, often managing to stay one step ahead.

But Simon knew full well that the world of police didn't begin and end at the precinct, or even the courtroom. So he built an entire city, and over the course of four seasons, populated it with beat cops, drug dealers, lawyers, and judges, and then also city councilmen, state senators, and, most recently, middle-school kids and their teachers. Simon has created a universe where everyone is human, where our sympathies often lie with the misunderstood youths on the wrong side of the law. Even when the cops get their man, we wonder if justice has truly been served.

As the show moved into its second, third, and fourth seasons, storylines branched out to include the local dockworkers, the city council, and the school system, from the classroom to the administration. While many shows portray politicians as doltish or corrupt, in The Wire they are flawed but often well-meaning human beings—like everyone else, their biggest drawback is a survival instinct to protect their own interests. The show has painted a picture of a damaged city filled with damaged people, each fighting over scant resources.

Even the show itself is a study in survival. Never a ratings slam dunk, The Wire demanded two things in short supply in much of the television landscape: patience and scrutiny from viewers. Told in one-hour installments with no commercial interruptions, episodes don't stir up cliffhangers every quarter hour. Stories unfold at a more deliberate pace, even more so than other premium channel fare. But the payoffs are immense.

If ever a series earned a consecutive viewing on DVD, this is it. With intricate storylines and steady character development over time, The Wire exhibits none of the grating repetition of even the best of television, when viewed one episode after another. Watch The Wire and marvel at what television writing can truly accomplish. Then go write.

Matthew Reynolds is a former journalist now working in feature film development. He is not responsible for items lost or stolen during the reading of this article.

The Wire courtesy HBO Home Video

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