"The Wire" on HBO

I remember watching The Wire the first time, I had no idea Idris Elba was english and it fully blew my mind when I saw him in stuff afterwards. Like, that dude 100% tricked me! I still am not 100% sure he's not pulling my leg with the whole Englishman thing. *narrows eyes*. I see you Idris. I see you.

sidebar- that oral history made me ish there was a West Wing Weekly-type podcast about The Wire, not just a dopey chatfest with fans who want to aimlessly dissect the whole show, but like a legit thing with a former cast member/s as a host/s, and that talked about each episode & had cast members on as regular guests.

would listen

right? it's such a rich show and deserves the same kind of love imo

Wow, I had no idea Game Day was directed by Milcho Manchevski. Guy directed Before the Rain, won the Golden Lion at Venice and was nominated for an Academy Award. Kinda lol at them going 'he turned out to be a good director'. Agniezka Holland also directed one, iirc. All in all, the visual side of the show is quite underrated, imo.

visually this show was clumsy as fuck

"workmanlike" if I'm being charitable

XP to Fred I think their assurance that this guy was a good director is softening the later reveal that he left at lunchtime and didn't come back cos he couldn't handle tv direction with heavy writer interference

idk i feel that visually the show is workmanlike in the best possible way. I'm struggling to think of moments that seemed clumsy, though it's been a while.

Workmanlike is only a criticism if workmanlike isn't right

the central appeal of the show was in the complex plot mechanics and the character nuances, so a workmanlike visual style that gets out of the way and just shows what happens in a straightforward way was fine.

Shows like Mad Men or Sopranos or Better Call Saul all have a bunch of visually stunning sequences/shots/scenes that stand out, but I can't say the same for the Wire.

Can't remember too many visually stunning shots in the sopranos, mad men otoh is the actual epitome is style over substance so yknow maybe it's just differing priorities here

you want me to list some?

this whole bit is incredible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slszWIdjN40

esp the final shot that tracks forward, past the characters and up into the trees

I remember she died

Maybe this is me, the visuals in a story-driven vehicle need to stay out of the way, so better in fact if functional is attained and nothing more.

and this (altho this is a shitty rip)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8AgLOcgXNo

xp

Yeah the dreams were good.

Otoh I would say that the workaday sequences and scenes in the sopranos share a lot visually with the wire. Exteriors around the docks aesthetically a lot like any shots of the construction sites, waste yards, what have you in the sopranos

It's really in the interiors that there's any difference, wire interiors smell like real life sopranos all look like sets to me

@outic, i agree with your second assessment, the wire obviously prizes a specific type of procedural-style "realism" over and above visual authorial flourishes. That's way different to me than clumsiness, though.

The Sopranos is often ugly and clumsy. The Wire is the cinema verité style from Homicide but on a much broader scale. The Wire is by far the better show visually.

Homicide even more underrated as a piece of visual art, though. Lars von Trier mentioned it as a key inspiration for a film like Breaking the Waves. Still looks weird and incredible.

are you ever right about anything

FREDERIK B IS RIGHT FOR ONCE

about homicide, not about anything else

Hey, taste is subjective, but I can think of a bunch of clumsy Sopranos shots off the top of my head - the freeze frame, cgi nancy marchand, the editing when chris shoots the hungarian in episode one - and nil in The Wire. Just because it was most often handheld does not mean it was 'clumsy'. And there were some stunning camera movements here and there.

I got yr back Fred

Might start a ban outic thread actually

I'm impressed Fred can remember those Sopranos moments. Normally I remember little about TV camerawork b/c so little of it stands out.

well, he did pick maybe the two most notorious visuals of the series?

It's exactly because so little stands out that it's easy to remember what does :) But I mean, take a look at the dream sequence Outic posted upthread, there's a bunch of shots in there that seems undercooked and rushed to me. It's not exactly David Lynch quality.

On the other hand, check out the awesome pan that begins this one, it goes 8 seconds before it finds D'Angelo, then follows him. All in all fifteen seconds. That's better than almost anything in Sopranos, and The Wire was filled with cool little touches like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8lyda_ZkLQ

The editing in the first forty seconds of this season 5 clip (so SPOILERS)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdpG92dsx1A

Wire had exactly one flashback sequence in its entire run – used in the first episode of season 1.

Amazing because all of those characters, all those fully developed characters - some of them just bit parts - never had any "fleshing out" or exposition about how and what made them tick. What you saw is what you saw. Is what it is.

Exposition through flashback, obv.

God are we talking about the visual style of The Wire again? That's missing the forest for the trees in a big way / looking for ways to nitpick at the Greatest Show Ever.

you wanna talk about why hillary lost instead

I read an essay a while back analyzing the visual style of the Agniezska episode -- which was in SEASON 3 -- it's the one with the scene with McNulty and Barksdale's mom. It definitely had its arty touches.

but going back and watching episodes again, the thing that I notice more is the differences in acting styles. Several of them are very "stage-y" -- as in they perform their lines in more of a theater way, rather than a "realistic" way. Carver and Lester stand out the most in this. Compare them to Bunk and Avon and Herc.

yeah i mean i know golden age of tv etc but good tv for me is still good storytelling .. if it's artistically achieved via impressive camerawork & whatnot, great, but if it's the camera's just a means to an end, that doesn't make it a worse show. not for me anyway

i mean, mad men was beautiful but it bored me to tears at least 50% of the time so i'm not gonna hoist it up over The Wire based on long shots of furniture & window-staring

But that's also kind of my point! The flourishes in The Wire are grounded in character and mood, but it's still inventive enough that I can find great details in stuff I've seen ten times. Sopranos tried to be 'stylish' but mostly failed imo.

Mad Men is great though...

Mad Men was only great when I was drinking as much as the characters on screen, otherwise, I'm with Mme. Veg - 50% snoozeville

Wire had exactly one flashback sequence in its entire run – used in the first episode of season 1.

Amazing because all of those characters, all those fully developed characters - some of them just bit parts - never had any "fleshing out" or exposition about how and what made them tick. What you saw is what you saw. Is what it is.

― pplains, Thursday, June 1, 2017 8:33 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There were those little online video vignettes with the younger versions of Omar and Prop Joe and someone else I can't remember now. Which, yes, they clearly took pains to keep out of the show itself.

Fred's totally right about Homicide, btw. I can recall its visual style (particularly the editing choices) much more clearly than that of The Wire.

Are we mainly talking about shot composition and editing? Because it seems to me The Wire has a number of really memorable settings: the Pit, the corners, the docks. Even if the camera work doesn't call attention to itself, it leaves a strong impression of these spaces.

There were those little online video vignettes with the younger versions of Omar and Prop Joe and someone else I can't remember now. Which, yes, they clearly took pains to keep out of the show itself.

― Trockasturm Hoar The Ramming Battle Ceraton (Old Lunch), Friday, June 2, 2017 8:01 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Holy shit, how had I never heard of these until now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38U15ytW24o

Mad Men was only great when I was drinking as much as the characters on screen, otherwise, I'm with Mme. Veg - 50% snoozeville

I've seen the first season and a half of mad men twice, really need to get back to it some day. It is a thing that is boring and good iirc

Watch it all, it's great. I'm sure I'll take plenty of flak when I say it's supplanted The Wire as my favorite cable series.

Mad Men is incredible, you all have terrible opinions

It's a reasonable take. The only other cable series I can think of with the same level of ambition. But no, The Wire is still my favorite :)

That Prop Joe prequel... I don't know what I would've done had they started an episode with that.

lol that's like some KITH "Ascertain" sketch shit

https://theringer.com/wire-hbo-characters-where-are-they-now-b9ee61c34aa8

Bill Simmons still doing his best to ruin The Wire