Containing nothing you probably didn't already know, but still interesting to read an American's explanation of The Wire to a (mostly) British audience.
“The Wire - The Complete Third Season” (HBO Home Video)
I feel like I know Baltimore better than I do. I especially dig the big city political corruption themes of seasons 3 and 4 (not yet available on DVD), they seem so familiar....
Kevin Carey: In an age of trashy entertainment, The Wire stands out as the greatest programme ever produced for American television.We Americans like to believe that we live in the land of opportunity, that capitalism serves as a solvent to class barriers, and that we have finally begun to atone for the nation's historic racial crimes.
There is truth in each of these beliefs, but there are also terrible lies, and the truth of our dishonesty has never been made so clear as in The Wire, the greatest programme ever produced for American television.
Set in the drug-ravaged ruins of Baltimore, Maryland, The Wire attempts to tell nothing less than the central story of the modern age: the struggle of individuals to maintain their identity and integrity in the face of relentlessly dehumanising institutions.
The first season, broadcast in 2002, focused on workers and leaders in the flourishing West Baltimore drug trade and the beleaguered city police department. Subsequent seasons expanded the cast to include unionised dockworkers threatened by deindustrialisation and politicians driven by ambition and corruption in equal measure.
The fourth and probably finest season, which recently concluded in the US, added four black boys on the brink of adolescence to the mix. Ill-served by a broken school system, each struggles in his own way to hold on to friendship and a future while resisting the lures of the only truly functional, rational institutions in their lives: drug gangs. The result is bracing, shattering drama.
Tags: drugs, /television, /urban
Funny to see scenes from season three shot in the neighborhood we're moving to. Indeed.