The Wire - the best show on TV

Prev

• 
• 
• 

Next

View gallery

In the Top 10 list of Amazon UK's best-selling TV DVDs sit such small-screen behemoths as the first series of Doctor Who (8), Gavin and Stacey (2) and series two of Heroes (6).

One show, however, occupies not one, two or even three slots – but four of them. It's difficult, depressing, slow, only airs on cable channel FX in the UK, and is in its fifth and final series. Chances are you've heard of it, but never seen it. It's called The Wire, and it's far and away the best show on television.

The Wire isn't so much a TV show, as a novel in TV form. The set-up – police in ­Baltimore trying to bust drug rings – may make it sound like a cliched cop procedural, but it's anything but.

It starts slow, is overly talky – ponderous, even – and is  ­distinctly average. But like a novel, give it time. Most people need six episodes to "get" The Wire. The overarching themes will soon come into focus.

Giving equal time to both sides of the law, the view zooms out. We see the ­parallels between cops and dealers; we look at business and hierarchy, at the money flow of the drug trade. And then out again – to the death of the working class, the ­unions, the reasons ­behind "white flight" and an inner city left to rot.

But The Wire is no tirade. And so out still more. This time, to the school kids groomed for the drug trade before they can spell, to the effects of absent fathers, to politics – deep into politics – and how the people at the top ­affect those at the bottom.

This last series looks at the role of media. For a much-­neglected show, it's certainly a fitting send-off.

Take the depth and breadth of the cast, which is similarly unmatched in TV terms. The Wire loves tinkering with stereotypes and expectations.

A drug kingpin who goes to night school. A terrifying stick-up man who's gay. The kid who heroically brings up his brother "right", but only by becoming a gangster ­himself. The "maverick" cop who doesn't always get results and should really play by the rules more often.

And their troubles are never forced or TV-neat. A junkie struggles with his ­addiction throughout the entire show. An alcoholic cop drinks himself silly, cleans up a series later, but falls back off the wagon a series after that. In The Wire, there is no happy ever after. No one is good, no one is bad, some are selfish, some are not. Troubles don't go away, and everyone is just trying to get by in a game that's fundamentally rigged. 

It's at once pessimistic and optimistic, complex and ­simple – people are trapped in systems. With an unparalleled authenticity that stems from its creators being a former Baltimore Sun reporter (David Simon) and a former Baltimore cop-turned-teacher (Ed Burns), The Wire watches their struggle.

Yet for all that, it's the ­relationships that stay with you. Yes, it's better than The ­Sopranos. Yes, it's better than Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica and any other brilliant US drama you care to mention. Nothing like The Wire – and I know this sounds like ­hyperbole, but it really is true – has been created before.

When they asked the then Democratic Presidential candidates what their favourite TV shows were, Hillary Clinton chose the sickly confection Grey's Anatomy. Barack Obama chose The Wire.

If for nothing else, he should be elected because of that. The man clearly knows what he's talking about.