As for why, well, pretty much for the same reasons stated by Kate and Constance.

As for the language, yes, it is often foul, but realistically so. As the series progresses they worked in the street slang that seems to be unique to Baltimore.

For nothing else, The Wire deserves watching just to study some brilliantly crafted characters.

I never figure that everyone will like the same stuff, or even that they should, or that it means anything if they do or don’t except people will and do have different tastes.

So I think your perspective is a valuable one, to set against Constance and myself.

Also, the swearing is definitely enough to put people off.

As for some of the books I enjoyed reading in 2007 and would recommend:

For fiction:

The Privilege of the Sword
by Ellen Kuskner

Beka Cooper: Terrier
by Tamora Pierce
(though I like her previous books better)

Inda
by Sherwood Smith

For non-fiction:

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
translated by Ivan Morris

Then the HBO series team (’The Wire’ was created by David Simon; executive producers, David Simon and Nina Kostroff Noble; co-executive producers, Joe Chappelle and Ed Burns; producers, Karen Thorson and George Pelecanos) then decided to develop The Wire ; they used many of the same professional actors in this series as they did in the previous show.

Like Alice I’m not a fan of cops and gangstas and druggies and the noir streak of this nation that gets wider every decade since post WWI.

But there are so many exceptions to that by now that maybe it no longer is true. Noir is what we’ve become: all corruption. As the head of Baltimore’s dockworkers union puts it with such sadness and bewilderment in season 2 of The Wire: Once this was a country that made things, things that the whole world wanted and bought, real things. Now it’s about putting your hand in the other guy’s pocket.”

It’s just the best distillation of what too much of the country and the world has become, best writing, best acting, most multi-layered, and never takes the easy way out. But — there is so much humanity and compassion, still tiny moments of triumph, of love, of communication and connection. Friendship. It’s America. We see what had been best about it. We see how greed, basically, has allowed the worst of it to come to the fore.

As Alice said, it might take an episode or two to feel it out, and decide if it is right for you or not. That seems to be the case for almost all arc seasonal television, even Buffy.

I’ve recovered enough from whatever bug caught me Christmas Eve to start watching Season 4.

Season 5, and the last one, has wrapped — this one is set in Baltimore’s media - newsworld.

Season 1 was “The Corner;” the drugs, the trade, the junkies, the cops, the prisons, etc.

Season 2 was the docks and local and immigrant (Greek and Russian gangsters) gangs, bringing the global trade home in criminality too.

Season 3 was the legal system.

Season 4 is the schools.

Season 5 is the newsroom.

The team is now looking at trying to do an arc New Orleans series. Simon grew up in NO.

Love, C.

I’m not into cops and criminals shows, but this one really gets down much more fully into characterization, motivation, and the real lack of black and white in any of these contexts. The writing is strong, but for me what really gets me is the level at which the writers layer in details to fully evoke the world they’re depicting and the way people function in that world. It’s just an exceptional piece of world-building and narrative form.

The first couple of eps of The Wire season 1 are slow, so you have to get through that basic set up. If you do find yourself fully caught by, say, ep 3 or 4, then you’re good for the ride. I love this show.

I will note that it is violent, foul-mouthed, and by season three graphically sexual (in realistic ways, some of which aren’t nice - that is, women offering sex in exchange for drugs), and that there aren’t a ton of strong roles for women and the secondary roles for women are not nearly as strong as the secondary roles for men. But it is testament to how good a show it is that I am willing to accept that they did not have the ability to go there or did not want to (season four gets into the schools and we begin to see many more strong secondary women characters) and appreciate what they are giving me.

Constance? Your take?

Talk a little about it, please?

My favorite season so far of The Wire is season 2.

I have the first disk of season 4 here; I’m waiting to be less sick-stupid to watch it though.

I watched so much good material on dvd this year. I watched far more dvds than I read novels. My non-fiction stayed about the same, I think.

Love, C.