The Wire - Series 2 - Complete (DVD)

The BBC`s rather bold policy of showing five series of The Wire back-to-back during the spring and summer evenings is very welcome as it annoying, and certainly all rather frantic if you want to keep up, video tapes piling up by our TVs as the excellent American cop series goes out at that post Newsnight, BBC2, 11:15pm weekday slot. It's a complete mystery why they didn't put it on the 9 pm weekday slot to build its popularity and so drag it out ...
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Series one reflected the Black American drug culture of the City of Baltimore, through the eyes of the police, the legislature, the local politicians and the black criminal underclass themselves, their methods not that different from the good guys in getting the job done, whoever the good guys are, promotion and self embellishment the order of the day.

The idea of The Wire is to follow the same case through all the series, ... more

The BBC`s rather bold policy of showing five series of The Wire back-to-back during the spring and summer evenings is very welcome as it annoying, and certainly all rather frantic if you want to keep up, video tapes piling up by our TVs as the excellent American cop series goes out at that post Newsnight, BBC2, 11:15pm weekday slot. It's a complete mystery why they didn't put it on the 9 pm weekday slot to build its popularity and so drag it out for two years it's that good and intelligent viewing for that anti-ITV prime-time slot.

Series one reflected the Black American drug culture of the City of Baltimore, through the eyes of the police, the legislature, the local politicians and the black criminal underclass themselves, their methods not that different from the good guys in getting the job done, whoever the good guys are, promotion and self embellishment the order of the day.

The idea of The Wire is to follow the same case through all the series, five so far, and its resolution, as yet, unknown. To balance things up some in this series, maybe to win back a bigger black middle-class audience after the Afro Americans were portrayed rather negatively (but fairly by the cities demographic and crime wave) all the way through the original series, series two flips things, the crooks and bad guys being mostly white, union members, mobsters and drug dealers, all operating down and around the Baltimore City docks, traditional blue-collar Americans and Eastern European immigrant gangsters running all manner of scams, from drugs to people smuggling. But most importantly all the characters from the previous series return, their various gangs and squads disbanded after the huge arrests, but now in new positions, but time taken to get used to the fragmentation of their roles and their new locations, British star Dominic West as sexy an phlegmatic Detective 'Jimmy' McNulty, now busted down to river cop, slightly less prominent.

-The set up-

After the Baltimore Police departments maverick team successful takes down 'The Towers', a highly lucrative source of 'crack' revenue in a black city project (sink estate), head honcho Avon Barksdale (Brit actor Wood Harris) escapes prosecution whilst his cousin, 'De`Angilo Barksdale (Larry Gillard Junior) is now doing twenty years, leaving new number two 'Stringer Bell' (Idris Elba) to restart the operation elsewhere in the city. Grubby police politics dictates that Lieutenant Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick), who headed the bust, see his team broken up for bringing the hassle of a major operation on the desks of superiors who want an easy life, Dep. Comm. for Operations William A. Rawls (Jon Bowman) particularly narked with Jimmy McNulty for setting the ball rolling in the first place, hence him being a river cop now. He wont be welcomed back into the unit.

The docks are where the action is for series two, all manner of scams going on as the heavy metal containers clang on to the loading bays full of contraband goodies from domestic warehouse and foreign fields afar, soon pilfered and exploited by the small group of corrupt union workers and various Baltic European mafias that scavenge there, the carve up headed by Polish American union steward 'Frank Sobotka' (Chris Bauer), who soon crosses swords with port authority head cop Major Valchek ( Al Brown) over some dead illegals in a container, resulting in Valchek putting the heat on Sobotkas guys, the two Poles going head-to-head over turf.

As this is on Detective McNultys (West) new patch he is soon snooping outside of his jurisdiction into the deaths of the foreigners, 14 attractive girls from the Eastern European sex trade suffocated and then sexually assaulted. When the various police and immigration authorities decide not to investigate the crime, trying to label it as a simple case of accidental death so to be able to cremate the bodies sharpish and so no case, paperwork, overtime or trial time to bother with, McNulty, who harbours a vendetta against his former commanders for reassigning him to the marine unit, decides to make sure his old boss has to take the case and so lumbered with those 14 bodies for downtowns less than impressive murder clear up rate. His plan does backfire slightly when Detective 'Bunk' Mooreland (Wendell Pierce) and Detective Freamon (Clark Peters), his best mates from the previous series, are assigned to the tricky case but its chance for him to be pulled into the show more, which is a good thing and some good on screen chemistry. McNulty has a habit of pissing off everyone off he meets, including his soon to be ex wife.

Back on the docks and the younger Sobabta clan want in on the action, Franks nephew Nick Sobabta (Pablo Schrieder) and his Franks idiot son Ziggy (James Ransome) getting deep into their own line of scams, soon hooking up with the Greek mafia. The Sobotkas have their fingers in every pie and when the boys score big from their first heist they are asked to steal the industrial chemicals that are used to purify heroine, a different ball game altogether. At the same time its becomes clear that Frank is the squads number one suspect for the murders, although Lieutenant Daniels, now assigned a team of familiar faces to the case, has been asked by Rawls not to treat this a murder case so to wrap it up early and protect everyone's promotion.

Although the black gang-bangers don't feature as much in this series, Omar (Michael K Williams) is back on the block, the vengeful drug dealer who was Barksdale rival crew hitman in series one, out to get even with Stringer and Avon while his crew is weak. But Avon is prepared to grass to cut his sentence so to stop Omar taking over his crib. Meanwhile De`Angilo is having second thoughts about his loyalty to the family business and that makes him a marked man to a lot of people, Avon Barksdale repaying that fading loyalty by sleeping with De`Angilo`s girl and living in his apartment.

-The Conclusions-

Everything about The Wire is clever. There's a scene early on where the 'Immigration and Nationalization Service' American Eagle crest is being taken down from the wall and being replaced with the official Homeland Security Badge, America no longer the land of the free, trying to keep people out than let them in. And that really is what the new America is all about and the five series of The Wire take you through that transaction.
We start with that cancerous black criminality in the original case and watch that disease spread though all levels of Americas Society, from the guy on the street to the highest paid lawyer. Everyone is on the take in some way and it's the only way the system seems to work, why this show is loved by the judiciary and cops. The credibility here is everyone is as smart as everyone else and so nobody really wins. The head of the drug gang is studying an economics degree to help 'distribution issues' whilst the cops are telling the bad guys to lie in court to help their prosecutions of slightly less violent persons, all to secure arrests and promotions. If they don't make those buts they get demoted. Ids the dealers don't deal they get far worse. What ever the lawyers do, of course, they just get richer.

It's beautifully written and acted and doesn't let any part of the judiciary off the hook, and certainly not a show about one dimensional characters. All the principal leads are fleshed out early on and no one gets a duff line, writer Simon Davies priding himself on that aspect. There is a bit more nudity and nookie in it this time and for me it doesn't sit well, the gay gangster love scenes very unexpected, perhaps there purely for shock value alone to let you know this is the real deal and what's wrong with drug dealers and killers being gay anyway. The Kray brother was.

The storyline is perhaps not as strong as series one and drifts into The Sopranos territory at times, which is not a bad thing by any means but feels like its borrowing from it at this point in the shows evolution, the two running concurrently on HBO then. But if you have seen series one on disc as I have then you are hooked and will keep watching. I will be tuning in to series three in June on BBC2 at that ungodly hour and if you guys are missing the likes of The Sopranos and The West Wing, that top level of quality US drama, then The Wire is up there, although you do need to watch from series one. There's not a lot of quality US drama around these days that doesn't end up rather soap opera and thankfully The Wire stays gritty and real all the way through. It doesn't want you to like the characters but hear their message. This is real television and HBO are always chasing perfection in that medium through its excellent drama.

Summary: HBO at its best

 

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