Excerpts from a NYT column on "The Wire"

• It is one of the most intimate and alarming depictions of urban America on television, and yet it’s an invigorating and even exhilarating experience, each season a new Harry Potter book for adults. Instead of magic “The Wire” traffics in realism and the romance of failure.

• This season, like all the others, ‘‘The Wire’’ taps into a cold, cold place with many losses and few gains, a sub-zero-sum game.

• ‘‘The Wire,’’ which is unquestionably one of the best and most original series on television in decades, has never received an Emmy Award in a universe where “Boston Legal” has five and “Desperate Housewives” has six.

• ..in the inverted logic of ‘‘The Wire,’’ failure is its own success, a badge of honor in a decaying and dishonorable world. The series’s creators never received the acclaim their work deserves, and there are no lasting victories on ‘‘The Wire,’’ just glimmers of success that tease out hope only to be quickly and brutally squelched.

• The series doesn’t revolve around one charismatic protagonist the way “The Sopranos” did. It doesn’t harbor a central mystery like the one in “Lost,” one that binds together a huge cast of characters. “The Wire” takes its title from the police wiretap surveillance that keeps detectives just within reach of a major bust; the series eavesdrops on a complicated, harsh and unexamined sector of American life, without subtitles or footnotes.

For the full article, click here.

I may, in the future, try to put together some on my own crudely produced video clips from the show and share them in this space.....like so...




Keep hope alive.