The Wire

The Wire is an HBO original television series based on the ongoing drug wars in Baltimore, Maryland. It is produced and written by David Simon, a former Baltimore journalist, and Ed Burns, a former police officer.

The series examines the drug trade not only through the eyes of the police but also by following the lives of the drug dealers and addicts. It also broadens out to look at the life of the city and the ways its instutions work, or don't, creating the problems that feed the drug trade.

The series was shot in Baltimore and often used locals as extras, includig cameos by a former Police Commissioner and by the Governor of Maryland..

It has been widely praised as one of the best TV dramas ever made, and compared in scope and power to a great novel.http://www.slate.com/id/2149566/

Creator David Simon based The Wire on his experiences as a police reporter for The Baltimore Sun, as well as on those of his writing parter, former Baltimore homicide detective Ed Burns. Initially intended to focus on police surveillance, the show grew to represent the larger pressure between individual need and institutional pressure. Each season approached the show's core issues and themes from a different perspective: the police department, the dockworkers, the politicians, the education system, and the media.

• Real life, and then some (The Guardian)

• Getting Wired (The Guardian)

• HBO's The Wire is challenging. It's also a masterpiece. (San Francisco Chronicle)

• Stephen King on the brilliant new season of The Wire (Entertainment Weekly)

• A Greek tragedy on the streets of Baltimore (Spiked)

The first season of The Wire introduces the main characters and centers on an investigation of the Barksdale drug gang in West Baltimore.

Due to the complexity of the plot and the large number of characters, many people find that it takes a few episodes before have a good grasp of what's going on and they are fully gripped by the series.

The second season of The Wire focuses on the port of Baltimore. The police investigate smuggling and human trafficing, while union leader Frank Sobotka tries to bring more work to the docks using money from dubious sources to buy political influence.

This season has been described as an elegy to America's working class. The decline of manufacturing in Baltimore and the port workers' struggles for a livelihood are an undercurrent running through the whole season.

The third season of The Wire returns to the West Baltimore drug scene. After some of the high-rises are demolished, the displaced drug gang seeks new territory elsewhere leading to conflict with other dealers.

Meanwhile veteran police commander, Major "Bunny" Colvin tries a new strategy to rescue normal life for the residents of his drug-ravaged district, and Tommy Carcetti positions himself to run for Mayor.

The fourth season takes us into the lives of the West Baltimore kids, on the streets and in the schools. At the same time it follows the Mayoral election race, and shows the way that schools, police and politics all come together to make the city what it is.

Meanwhile we continue to follow the investigations of drug trafficing and the homicides that result from it, and everything comes together as the street kids get caught up as witnesses, victims or future criminals.

The fifth and final season of The Wire brings many of the strands from all of the previous seasons together. Police work suffers from the city's financial problems, as budgets are pared to the bone to help keep the school system running. Investigators try to find ways to play the system to get the resources to follow leads from their previous work.

In the final season, we are also introduced to the workings of the press and its relationships with the politicians and the police. Press coverage influences politicians and policing priorities, while The Baltimore Sun itself faces the financial pressures of the declining newspaper market, and reporters pursue their own career and personal goals as best they can.

• Redemption Song and Dance - A profile of Little Melvin Daniels, former gangster and actor in The Wire

• 'The Wire': Young Adults See Bits of Their Past (Washington Post)

• Everything you were afraid to ask about "The Wire" (Salon)

• David Simon on cutting "The Wire" (Salon)

• Television Without Pity - The Wire

• TV Forum - The Wire

• HBO - The Wire Bulletin Boards

• Digital Spy - The Wire