The Greatest Television Show of All-Time: The Wire

"The Greatest Television Show of All-Time" -- that is one hell of a statement. One that gets tossed around quite arbitrarily. Whenever we hear that statement we always take it with a grain of salt. As the show aired, it quickly gained a small but very loyal fanbase that heaped mountains of praise on it. I'm not even sure if this show was aired properly in Canada so I never got a chance to verify it for myself. I was still skeptical, but hearing and reading many people and many critic's opinions got me curious. These weren't just generic one sentence statements that studios like to put in advertisements, these were passionate, detailed love letters to the show. People that liked the same shows I did loved The Wire. So with the show over and released in its entirety on DVD, it allowed me a chance to look and confirm for myself whether or not this was the greatest television show of all-time.

The main premise of the show follows several detectives in the city of Baltimore as they investigate murders and the drug trade. What makes this show unique is that it gives equal billing to both sides of the law. The supposed good guys aren't always good and the supposed bad guys aren't always bad. It's not as a simple as looking at it and calling it black and white.

Show creator David Simon, was a former reporter in Baltimore, and another major contributor to the show was former Baltimore detective and school teacher Ed Burns. No doubt the realism of the show comes from their first-hand experiences in their respective fields. Simon himself was frustrated by what he saw in the police, school systems and the failure of the bureaucracy to deal with it in a timely and efficient manner. In one of the special features in this DVD set, Simon specifically talks about the city of New York and the Law & Order television shows. He mentions how there are more murders on all those shows combined than there are in Manhattan in a year.

The scope of the show expands greatly as the series progresses. We are introduced to the police and the drug dealers in the first season. The second season introduces to the Port, where these dealers get their drugs. The third season introduces us to the political side. The similarities between politicians and drug dealers are uncanny. Drug dealers deal in drugs and destroy lives with guns and coke. Politicians deal in bullshit and destroy lives with their words. The fourth season delves into the school system and how many kids are pushed into the underworld as a result of the failure of the school system. Finally, the final season introduces us to newspaper reporting. I think we've all experienced sensationalistic reporting, and this season gives us a pretty good overview of it.

Besides its eye on detail and ultra realism, what really makes this show special, is its large and diverse cast. I don't believe I've seen another television show that not only had so many important characters, but so many fully developed characters. I could go on and on about this show, but there is so much it covers and so much that I want to talk about: my favorite characters, my favorite moments, my favorite season; I could go on and on.

So is The Wire is the greatest television show of all-time? Having seen the entire series in a very short span, I can confirm that yes, The Wire is indeed, The Greatest Television Show of All-Time. It's not a cheery show by any means, it'll make you angry and it might even make you cry, but it is very well worth checking out. It's available on DVD for a reasonable price, and most likely free at your local library.