"The Wire" on HBO

Wendell Pierce is doing Death of a Salesman in London this spring, btw:

https://www.youngvic.org/whats-on/death-of-a-salesman

i think ppl compare The Wire to the well-oiled genre machines that comprise a lot of current water cooler type shows and it's more of a ramshackle beast than those tend to be.

? it's a cop show

but it's not a procedural

it is more sprawling than that yeah

Dickensian, if you will

it's interesting to think of it in comparison to non-American shows that have similar premises and construction -- I'm thinking "Spiral" from France, and "Powder" from India

there was also this British show that ran only a couple series in the late 90s "Supply and Demand" that is kinda a proto-Wire and has Eamonn Walker in it, who played Kareem Said in Oz, which was also a proto-Wire show

It doesn’t get lumped together with its mosaic contemporaries like Traffic and Babel, though it shares an ambition.

I finished watching Oz fairly recently, which is itself something of a proto-Wire and features a number of the same actors. I might have to check out Supply and Demand

BOSCH has some faint Wire echoes but that's really only because the cast has included Lance Reddick, Jamie Hector, and James Ransone, plus the politics of Reddick's character moving up the LAPD command chain are somewhat Ced Daniels-ish.

Wondering if, in 3 years time,, The Wire will get the same 20-year fanfare currently being enjoyed by The Sopranos. Hope so!

I'm rewatching the Sopranos at the moment, Michael K Williams turns up as the guy who shelters Jackie Aprille Jr towards the end of S3

im still on season 4 first time round i like to take this stuff at my own pace

Sopranos? It's worth taking your time over!

xxp - re Bosch -- that character is way more sympathetic as played by Reddick than in the books, where the character is white.

like, they kinda grafted some Cedric Daniels onto the book character

xps nah the wire

also worth savouring

yep

JD Williams had a bit part in The Sopranos, part of a crew (hired by Christopher) robbing one of Corrado's trucks in the first season. Also, Michael B. Jordan had a blink-or-miss-it turn as one of a group of kids tormenting a young Tony in a flashback sequence.

lady gaga was a friend of meadows iirc or is that a well-worn fact at this stage

lady gaga wasn't in the wire

also a well known fact

her environmental activism is well known, yes

Gaga had a bit as an extra/friend of AJ's

xp

Wondering if, in 3 years time,, The Wire will get the same 20-year fanfare currently being enjoyed by The Sopranos. Hope so!

― henry s, Wednesday, February 6, 2019 1:00 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it will not

wondering if there would be so much fanfare without the passing of Gandolfini

There would not - but that is not why it will not.

It didn't have the same fanfare of the Sopranos 18 years ago!

I think it most definitely will? Sopranos, Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, those are kinda the big four.

it absolutely will

yeah, the wire was nowhere as feted as the sopranos at the time.

I mean it's the most thinkpiece-friendly show ever made

there will be multiple articles about the cultural impact of weebey.gif alone

I feel like, if anything, the fact that it was less feted than The Sopranos initially was a contributing factor to its subsequent canonisation. For much of its run, it was the "best show you're not watching". By the last season it was "the greatest show ever made, and you never watched it, idiot"

It then really blew up in the box-set era, while still retaining a sort of cultish appeal. Kind of a shorthand for the in-the-know TV viewer: "Oh, you still haven't seen The Wire?"

Now it's firmly established as one of the cornerstones of the golden age of TV, and it's also just an extremely popular TV show that millions of people have watched, loved, and memed

It will be feted

otm

also Sopranos is better :)

yeah and i think will be boosted by having that little bit more cachet for the ppl who tend to write these pieces wanting to be seen to have been itk at the time

It was pretty much rolling daily coverage in The Guardian when it aired on the BBC for the first time

and that was a year after the final season

The fact that it's appeal had a slower burn would seem to make a big-deal anniversary less, and not more, likely

Anyway there is really no comparison btw the cultural impacts of these shows

its!

Just finished S4 last night (last 9 episodes over 2 evenings) and damn, this is where it finally kicked into gear for me. Dukie, Randy, Namond and Michael are the heart of everything the show's trying to get at.

so good & so ;_;

All 60 episodes of #TheWire, ranked from worst to best https://t.co/nZVxtO7xFa

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) February 23, 2019

This is ... not ... how you're supposed to watch this show?

All the pieces matter (but some matter more than others)

This just...yeah. I can understand better when people do this with songs.

I finished S5 Thursday night btw. Good-to-great show despite some big surface-level flaws.

rankers gonna rank

I will say this about the article - the author chose the right #1.

"US."

WmC, what did you think of S5 in comparison to the rest?