Inspired Television
Over the past year, my wife and I have slowly worked our way through the first four seasons of the HBO serial drama The Wire. We found the first episode or so of the first season a bit slow, but before long were utterly hooked. We just finished the recent DVD release of the fourth season last week.
Wow, what a breath of fresh air this series is! In an article in Slate, Jacob Weisberg proclaimed the show surely the best TV show ever broadcast in America.
I have a hard time arguing with him. The story-line is sprawling and intricate and absolutely compelling, and the characters—every single one of them—have a three-dimensionality that makes everything else on television look like cardboard cutouts.
Perhaps most importantly, this shows deals with issues that matter deeply to the contemporary present with an intelligence and nuance and even humor that makes the current presidential campaign disturbingly shallow by comparison: the changing role of cities like Baltimore in an increasingly globalized and liberalized political-economy, the politics of race in urban America, the hypocrisy of failed federal anti-drug and education policy, and the dysfunctions of institutions all come together the Wire in a way that works beautifully.
Since we don’t subscribe to HBO, I guess we’ll have to wait another year to see the fifth, and final, season. Sigh … it’s going to be a long year!
