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Amazon.co.uk Review
The Wire is one of those programmes where the increasing number of people who seem to passionately recommend it are simply not wrong. For buried underneath a mountain of praise, and talk of it being one of the finest television shows of all time, is a staggering piece of work, one that slowly but surely takes a look at the many facets of the drugs trade, centred in the city of Baltimore. Series by series, we spend time with the cops, the dealers, the media, local politicians, the education system and more, as The Wire gives each careful treatment, and a three-dimensional portrayal. It also paints a picture of a city in real trouble, with Baltimore one of The Wire’s uncredited stars. But where the show really delivers is in the characters it creates and moulds, and the very real troubles and challenges each of them must face. The show’s detailed strokes are even more compelling than the broader picture it paints. Enhanced by a series of non-showy performances in front of the camera, and some immaculate writing behind, The Wire really is that proverbial real deal. It’s genuinely unpredictable (characters of all sizes find themselves ruthlessly bumped off when you least expect them to), fearless in its tackling of certain subjects, and is that very masterpiece that an increasing army of champions of The Wire suggest it is. The five series contained here are genuinely American television at its very finest, right through to the final scene. Mesmerising television. --Simon Brew
Product Description
Actors: Dominic West Format: Box set, PAL Language English, French Subtitles: English, French, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Portuguese, Swedish Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.) Aspect Ratio: 4:3 - 1.33:1 Number of discs: 24 Classification: 18 Studio: Warner Home Video DVD Release Date: 8 Dec 2008
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
232 of 242 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life on the corner leaves most other dramas in the shade,
By Mr. Tristan Martin (Hertfordshire, UK) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Wire: Complete HBO Season 1-5 [DVD] (DVD)
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.
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The greatest,
By
This review is from: The Wire: Complete HBO Season 1-5 [DVD] (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.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So astounding it provokes vertigo and addiction,
By Oliver W. Holmes (Luxembourg) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wire: Complete HBO Season 1-5 [DVD] (DVD)
There are a few absolutely remarkable series (often coming from HBO) but "The Wire" stands in a category of itself. It is purely and simply a masterpiece of the visual arts, rich in so many ways that structuring a comment requires an effort.At the beginning is the concept of a serie dealing with police - mob relationships in the style that could be called absolute realism, including the broader context of the American society. Viewing this has more efficiency than reading 100 PhDs on the American urban society (and frankly - pace to PhDs' writers - is a little bit more entertaining). This should be mandatory viewing for each candidate mayor in a big city, to enligthen the difficulty of guaranteeing security and fighting against drugs. After this comes the script, incredibly sophisticated. Each season goes in a sligthly different direction, and this increases the global power of the serie. In each season, there are ten different intrigues, which sometimes converge according to the logic of individual behaviour and sometimes diverge again. Each character is provided with his/her own pulsions, contradictions, falls. And this is done without losing - ever - the viewer's attention, which is a narrative miracle. Then come the dialogs. Sharp, raw, sometimes highly cynical. The political sequences are absolutely amazing from this point of view. Then come the settings, remarkably authentical. One needs to see how the discovery of slum houses is visually subtle (angle, light, colors, objects). And finally come the actors. The competition in excellence between them is so tough that it is impossible to isolate one of them. One thinks about some characters long after having turned the television off. The power of the young actors is especially mesmerizing. They never overact, which must be difficult at their age and with such characters. In conclusion, the more one sees this serie, the more one gets the impression that it will appear in the future decades as an essential stage in the history of television. Its creators can rightly feel proud.
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