The Wire: Complete HBO Season 1-5 [DVD]

Another HBO masterstroke. David Simon and Ed Burns creation The Wire is so good it literally spoils other TV for you. You watch CSI and Criminal Minds and it feels like an insult to your intelligence.

Each series takes on a different "theme" or institution; in the first series it examines the workings of the drug trade and the police in Baltimore. "Bodymore Murderland" says the graffiti.

From the very outset this show is palpably different, the characters are complex with good and bad sides. The lines of what is good and isn't are blurred you don't root forthe cops. The casting is inspired and the characters plausible due in no small measure to the fact that they are either Baltimore characters or an amalgam of a number of characters. Bunk and Bubs really existed.

Series two moves into the crumbling docks and deals with the economics and the death of the port in this once great and proud harbour town.

Series three centres upon town hall and the corruption and the importance of demographics in deciding who runs the town.

Series four goes into the public education system - where the parallels between the statistics over real results in the education system and the police resonate with much of what is going on in the UK.

Series five closes this great drama by examining the role of the press and its effects upon perception in the city - where what goes in the front page is not the most important story. The death of honest investigative reporting in favour of sensationalism. The heart breaking series closing montage demonstrates that life goes on. There are no fairytale endings. Life goes on.

The storylines and characters are inventive and brave. This series is made for DVD it's complex and rewards the patient and intelligent. David Simon himself describes it as a visual novel - which is a great analogy, once you get past the scene setting early episodes and you can't put it down. Without the irritation of commercial breaks you can get with the narrative thread and the pace of the story lines. In amongst this seemingly bleak background there are stories of hope and despair but there is a humanity to the whole thing.

60 hours of absolute gold. It says much for how subversive this show is that irt has been continually overlooked by the Emmys. I think David Simon must be proud.

On the surface, The Wire is generically a cop drama, focusing on the attempts of a dedicated team of specialists to take down a drug kingpin. If that were simply the case, The Wire would stand as the best cop show ever made. However, it is so much more than that. The Wire is a dissection of a modern North American city, cutting through the socio-economic strata, depicting the lives of kids selling drugs on the corner, the bureaucratic management of police and their target-driven policies, the politicians attempting to balance what should be done against what needs to be done, school kids trying to walk a fine line betwixt education and the temptations of the corner and the drug barons organising their empire.

Even that description omits numerous other characters, plot threads and entanglements. More importantly than the Dickensian scope, The Wire has such a vivid sense of authenticity: much is shot on location in Baltimore, Maryland aka Bodymore, Murderland, that its depiction of life in an urban ghetto, the images of whole blocks of derelict slums, shattered lives, the poor and the desperate seem reminiscent of footage of Baghdad, post-U.S. invasion.

This authenticity might be derived from the fact the programme has two principal creators, David Simon, who worked for many years as a police reporter for The Baltimore Sun newspaper and Ed Burns who is a former homicide detective who worked extended drug surveillance cases. Such is The Wire's authenticity, that one real-life dealer from Baltimore commented in an interview that the only unrealistic thing about The Wire is that no m*f* in it watches The Wire!

The Wire is another phenomenal HBO drama. Previous dramas from that station have included Oz, which had quite a few cast members that ended up joining The Sopranos or The Wire. Oz has an immediate brutality quite distinct from anything else. The Sopranos has a witty overt intelligence that is instantly recognisable. Deadwood has such sophisticated linguistic construction. The Wire shares the complex multi-levelled plotting of these great series but is a more slower-burning affair.

As with the above-mentioned dramas, the ensemble cast of The Wire is outstanding and it could be inappropriate to highlight any one person in particular. Omar, a guy who makes a living robbing drug dealers has garnered some media attention but for me, The Bunk brings some much needed humour to the series.

Never winning many awards, having much commercial success or any high profile media interest, The Wire has nonetheless come to be regarded as quite possibly the finest drama series ever made. That's a big sell but entirely justified. There has never been anything approaching The Wire's depth before. Watch this series and all others seem one dimensional in comparison.

Having watched all 5 series in a very short space of time (over the past 2 months)this might colour my review slightly, however as of writing I can safely say that there has never been anything better I have seen, and that probably extends to movies as well as previous television series.

In a programme of great, great characters (the list is endless, Omar, Avon, D'Angelo, Bubbles, Daniels, Bunk, Rawls - not exactly likeable but certainly brilliant, and of course Stinger Bell) Jimmy McNulty rises just about to the top - quite simply one of the best and most enjoyable characters you are likely to see.

'Multi-layered' is one of those descriptions that you read and often it doesn't mean that much, but is some critics attempt to sound intelligent, but in this case the definition is spot on. This can be viewed on so many levels and each series brings something different. The story regarding Bubbles in itself is a masterpiece, they could take out all his scenes from across the 5 series and put them into a film, and it would win oscars across the board. To an extent Omar's story runs parallel, and whilst this doesn't pull on the heart strings in quite the same way, it is still exceptional.

My only slight criticism would be the level dips slightly in my opinion in series 2 (although people do disagree with that, so maybe is just how I see it and how I loved the storyline and characters of series 1 and 3) but 3,4 and 5 are exceptional. In a very, very (very) sad way by the end these characters felt like your friends, and it was pretty emotional that last episode montage.

Before it was the Soprano's, which I loved and was fantastic, but ultimately it didn't sustain it too well over the whole period, and don't think it had the depth of the Wire and did focus on one character a lot more, even if Tony Soprano was one hell of a character. I certainly don't remember as feeling as 'involved' in that as with the wire.

Films I have seen since, even very good ones, have felt slightly odd and light - how can a film develop a character over 2 and a half hours in the way this has done over 60 hours. Impossible.

One word of warning, if you're expecting a Prison Break / 24 / Lost type series, you're in the wrong place. This isn't cliffhanger television, or popcorn television in the way those programmes (much as i enjoy the first 2, not seen lost) they are fun and enjoyable, but ultimately there is no real depth to them.

And another - pay this the attention it deserves, you need to sit and watch this properly, not be doing other things whilst its on, it requires, and deserves, your full concentration. You will be rewarded.

One tip - I needed subtitles for a lot of it, it does help.

Enjoy.