Merry Christmas guys! Start drinking because 2010 will be a very tough year.
Merry Christmas guys! Start drinking because 2010 will be a very tough year.
Member since:13.05.2008
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At anyone time one-in-three black men between the ages of 16 and 30 in the United States are in the penal system in some capacity, that rather unfortunate statistic the essence of The Wire, HBO`s biggest and best cop show running right now, and I believe all five series soon to be shown on BBC2 for your pleasure.
With Barak Obama in power there could be no better time to get into this, yet another excellent drama from over the pond. It's subtle message is all about why it's been very tough for a black man to be the President, whilst its narrative is the war on drugs in Americas cities. The one-in-three black Americans of that age group that could legally vote in November for their brother because they haven't been to prison are ironically the most likely to get made redundant and lose their houses in the Obama presidency, hardly a fair payback for their unstinting loyalty to their colour at the ballot box, that crushing unemployment creating yet more drug fuelled ghettos across America to write TV cop shows about. The extra ingredient here that flavours the pie is that Baltimore, the shows backdrop, is one of those black powerbase cities that got Obama the gig, one storyline here exploring how some of that drug money may end up dirtying the pockets of the black politicians in the city that backed him, lots of fingers in lots of pies, the drug trade second only to fast-food restaurants for employers of black people in America. There's a real truth to this show and its one rarely tackled in Hollywood, only HBO willing to risk it. We know the shows creator Simon David wrote this from the cops' perspective for a cop audience, but you can also see the gangbangers huddling around the TV as it nails their life too.
What's dramatically great about 'The Wire' is the cops and the villains get equal billing, status and classy dialogue from creator Simon David's pen, the line blurred between who exactly are the good guys and who are the bad ones a master touch. Both the hoods and the cops have similar command and control structures, decision makers and decision breakers, making politics the king. The whole concept is beautifully written and constructed like the Sopranos and has that essential ingredient that makes HBO work so well over here- it's aimed at intelligent people and so not Americans. The Wire really is 'punch you in the face' TV that keeps you on the edge of your seat - so in range of that punch.
-The Cast-
Dominic
West ... Det. James 'Jimmy' McNulty John Doman ... Dep. Comm. for Operations William A. Rawls Wendell Pierce ... Det. William 'Bunk' Moreland Lance Reddick ... Lt. Cedric Daniels Sonja Sohn ... Det. Shakima 'Kima' Greggs Seth Gilliam ... Sgt. Ellis Carver Domenick Lombardozzi ... Det. Thomas 'Herc' Hauk Clarke Peters ... Det. Lester Freamon Jim True-Frost ... Det. Roland 'Prez' Pryzbylewski Delaney Williams ... Sgt. Jay Landsman Frankie Faison ... Commissioner Ervin H. Burrell Corey Parker Robinson ... Det. Leander Sydnor
The dealers....
Larry Gilliard Jr. ... D'Angelo Barksdale Michael K. Williams ... Omar Little J.D. Williams ... Preston 'Bodie' Broadus Wood Harris ... Avon Barksdale Idris Elba ... Russell 'Stringer' Bell Jamie Hector ... Marlo Stanfield Chad Coleman ... Dennis 'Cutty' Wise Tray Chaney ... Malik 'Poot' Carr Michael B. Jordan ... Wallace
The lawyers...
Michael Kostroff ... Maurice 'Maury' Levy Deirdre Lovejoy ... Asst. State's Atty. Rhonda Pearlman Robert Wisdom ... Howard 'Bunny' Colvin
The corrupt politicians
Isiah Whitlock Jr. ... State Sen. R. Clayton 'Clay' Davis Frederick Strother ... State Delegate Odell Watkins
-A general overview...
The star of the show is Det. James 'Jimmy' McNulty (Dominic West), a maverick Baltimore murder squad cop who's not one for authority, let alone regulations and sharing ideas. But when drug dealer D'Angelo Barksdale (Larry Gilliard Jr) walks for a murder rap of a bystander, McNulty can't hep stick his oar in over that unjust decision by breaking bread with the judge on the case. It's not police protocol and certainly undermines those above McNulty who are not slow on coming forward and reminding him who runs the police department around here. But McNulty sees this as his big chance to actually do something on the job and his actions set the ball rolling on the judge setting up a special division to break up drug crime in West Baltimore, especially in 'The Towers', a high rise 'project' were Barksdale`s family run the heroine and crack trade.
Everyone is angry with McNulty, especially his department head, Dep. Comm. for Operations William A. Rawls (John Doman), who has to restructure his whole department around McNultys interfering and the preceding judge's request. The new department (dumped in the basement in disgrace) will be made up of cops dragged in and around from the precincts, not particular liked in their own stations or under some sort of disciplinary so desk bound and useless. The unit is headed by Lt. Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick), an ambitious Afro American officer who also has a grubby past that needs cleaning. It's a mixture of loose cannons, chubby red nosed Irish cops near retirement, and younger and more enthusiastic detectives looking to make stripes for Daniels and they don't have much time to achieve their objective. But will they buy into McNultys crusade?
The idea will be to bring down the 'Towers' with big show trial arrests so to make the police chief and the black major look good in election year and push up the cops murder detection rate, dangerously low even before McNulty started meddling. As the operation gets underway we meet the principal players in the drug gang. D'Angelo Barksdale, the gangster with a conscious, is quickly back on the street but soon demoted to running things from ground zero for messing up with the court trial in the first place, answering only to his big brother, Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris), and second-in-command, Russell 'Stringer' Bell (Idris Elba). The cop's secret weapon is 'Poot' (Tray Chaney), their snitch on the ground in the 'Towers', whos neat hat trick begins to identify the command structure in the gang and so move things forward on the surveillance side.
McNulty seems to know people in the FBI too and helps to keep the investigation going when it hits a bump in the road, which there are plenty, especially when the team need an electronic wire to tap the gang's telecommunications, a last resort for policing in America that requires a lot of important signatures to make it happen. As they build their case against Barksdales crew it's a constant battle of internal politics in both the police force and the drug gang on how this will play out, stabbing each other in the back having far different meanings for both when settling issues over seniority and 'respect'. Once you're in the 'game' then there's only one way out. But the cops mouths and habits are just as dirty as the jive talking dealers and both are more concerned about that demotion than promotion chances, political correctness hampering the cops 'get your story straight' style, whilst the gang-bangers settle everything with the gun, mafi style. But when Daniels' is persuaded by McNulty to follow the money as well as the drugs a whole different can of worms is opened, making themselves yet more enemies on both sides...
-The Conclusion-
I don't normally watch American cop shows but everyone on dooyoo who loved my two favourite American shows of The Soprano's and 'The West Wing' have mentioned this in recommendation to me. It's not quite in that league (yet) but after just one series I'm already hooked and planning to get hold of series 2. If anyone's interested I have series 6 and 7 of the West Wing if you want to swap for series 2 of this I'm all ears.
The Wire has a real intelligence to it and I suppose you could say it's a mix of The West Wing and The Soprano's..., gangs meets politics, crime meets corruption, the message here that the drug trade is so lucrative in Americas percentage Black American cities that the people in power want a slice of the pie and so tolerate the crime to earn off it - if they can contain it in the ghettos, a new meaning for the words 'Black Economy'.
Because the series was filmed just after '911' there are plenty of cross-references and comparisons to the 'war on terror' to the 'war on drugs', conflicts America are fighting right now.... In the show the FBI have diverted most of their resources to internal terrorisms and so the drugs trades is ignored and so flourishing, claiming far more lives than 911 ever did in America. That's one of many interesting points made here on a show that actually wants to identify and illuminate black America's crime wave.
There's also clear racial lines and stereotypes set out early on here, adding to the shows depth. All the lawyers are shifty Jews, the lazy cops are all Irish and the black guys are as one, whether cops or not. But in reality that's what it's probably like in the real police department as everyone watches their own back with their own.
Most importantly the characters have to be good to make any TV series work well and they are spot on here, Dominic West's, man alone divorced cop a cliché but a brilliant individual standout performance, the egotistical cop that makes the job all about him, even using his youngsters to help him with surveillance with his weekend with the kids. I also like the way the creator in David Simon has made his drug boss a more sophisticated guy, even going to college to learn macroeconomics so to run his business a little smoother.
As I say the writing is bang on, the cops as dirty mouthed and slangy as the street creo... The kids love to use drug analogies to explain everything, including the younger ones homework and the rules of Chess. The Chess anology is brilliant writing. Its little gems like that exchange that grabs you early on and has you racing through all 13 episodes awaiting the next series. Where as shows like 'Lost' and '24' quickly became tiresome soap operas of pulsing pecks and pouting girls, The Wire seems quite confident in keeping its audience through other means, that of the smart writing and character enhancement. This is a guy's show through and through and I suspect will also appeal to intelligent women as it has many strong female characters too, including a lesbian cop, Sonja Sohn as Det. Shakima 'Kima' Greggs, and a feisty emancipated attorney Ronda Pearlman (Deirdre Lovejoy). And if there's any women reading this that likes The Sopranos and The West Wing then I think we have a lot in common. But can anyone recommend me any other US drama that would compliment those three?
= = = = = = = Special Features = = = = = = =
Every fourth disc has an audio commentary by creator and writer David Simon. Each episode has a text summary BEFORE you watch it so be ready on the button...
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Imdb.com scores it an astonishing 9.7 out of 10.0 (16,034 votes) 13 X 1 hour episodes £5 weekly deal at Blockbusters £25 at HWV.
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Advantages: Amazing storyline, incredible characters, so so so gripping Disadvantages: You won't leave your house for days if you buy the series on DVD!
Advantages: Amazing storyline, incredible characters, so so so gripping Disadvantages: You won't leave your house for days if you buy the series on DVD!
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