Skip to main content

The Wire

I just completed watching all five seasons of The Wire, the American urban crime drama from HBO.  You have likely heard of it, or seen it - it is a favourite among writers and poets, I've noticed.  I won't rave here for long, except to say, I believe it to be the finest piece of television drama ever made, except for Brideshead Revisited (which was, after all, briefer and based on a classic novel).  The complexity of the characterisation and multiple plots over many seasons, and the commitment to exploring socio-political issues is remarkable - but the ability to balance high-brow intelligence with street level accuracies, genre-busting ironies, pitch-perfect acting, and never-subsiding suspense, is unique.  The Wire is a permanent masterwork, the Citizen Kane of the small screen.  Utterly moving, enthralling, hilarious, upsetting, bleak, and yet curiously inspiring (there is always a bit of light in the darkness) I envy those who still have these many hours ahead of them.  It is Good TV.

Comments

Mark Granier said…
Completely agree Todd. The Wire is amazing, though it took me awhile to get into (and I still have season 4 to get through). Then there is the often-overlooked Deadwood, not to mention Generation Kill, Mad Men and the newish comic-(very)tragic Breaking Bad. I also have a soft spot for the absurd Dexter (wonderful opening creds and soundtrack) and that wildly OTT drama with a transfusion of operatic soap, True Blood (with even better opening creds): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r77tta6HPw
Too many to get through really.
chuck.godwin said…
HI Todd,
You are so right about "The Wire". I remember when it first came out, folks were skeptical of another "ghetto, drugs and violence" piece on American television. That attitude quickly changed after a few episodes. And I will echo Mark about "Generation Kill". Though different in storyline and characterizations, and lacking some of the sustained dramatic intensity of "The Wire", it is worth a watch.

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".