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The Wire is awesome, British TV less so
tommydski:
--- Quote from: Hairy Joe Bob on 10 Aug 2008, 19:41 ---I actually want to be McNulty. The guy's a fucking asshole but he's the coolest motherfucking asshole on the planet.
--- End quote ---
I actually found him an annoying, destructive bastard. I think you're supposed to though. Fellow Britlander Dominic West does a reasonable job with the Irish/American accent I think but maybe yanks thought otherwise? The episode where he had to pretend to be British was pretty amusing. Of the Po-lice I liked Lester, Bunk, Landsman, Daniels and Pryzbyelewski the most. On the street, pretty much any scene with Stringer Bell, Omar or Bubbles was excellent.
I think I might re-watch Season One again just because it was so good. The scene where Bunk and McNulty dress a homicide crime scene with absolutely no dialogue aside from the repeated exclamation of 'Fuck' in different intonations is brilliant. You can watch it even if you haven't seen the Wire, there are no spoilers.
benji:
--- Quote from: KvP on 10 Aug 2008, 22:11 ---I actually like Homicide better (same creators and whatnot) but that's mostly just due to Andre Braugher. The Wire is really an achievement, though. Far superior to the Sopranos.
--- End quote ---
I agree with everything in this statement. Except maybe the "far superior." The best moments on the Sopranos were as good as The Wire but The Wire was a little more consistently brilliant. I really need to get the Wire on DVD at some point.
tomselleck69:
--- Quote from: tommydski on 13 Aug 2008, 07:31 ---Fellow Britlander Dominic West does a reasonable job with the Irish/American accent I think but maybe yanks thought otherwise?
--- End quote ---
I thought he did alright. It was actually learning that he was English that made me attuned to the inconsistencies in his accent, not hearing the inconsistencies and wondering if he might not be American.
Inlander:
--- Quote from: tommydski on 13 Aug 2008, 07:31 ---The scene where Bunk and McNulty dress a homicide crime scene with absolutely no dialogue aside from the repeated exclamation of 'Fuck' in different intonations is brilliant.
--- End quote ---
There are masses of Baltimore cop/crime in-jokes in the Wire. The show's co-creator David Simon, who wrote the (true crime) book upon which Homicide was based, explains this scene thus:
--- Quote ---The five-minute scene offers no explanation for itself beyond the physical activities of the detectives as they address the crime scene and the almost continuous use of the word fuck in all its possible permutations - an insider's homage to the great Terry McLarney, a veteran Baltimore murder police who once predicted that Baltimore cops, in their love of profanity, would one day achieve a new and viable language composed entirely of such.
--- End quote ---
It's worth reading Simon's book Homicide: a year on the killing streets. Apart from being a fascinating and entertaining read, there are many overlaps between it and Homicide, the series, and the Wire: for instance, the very first (pre-credits) scene of the first episode of the first season is pretty much word-for-word a real anecdote Simon overheard and recounts in the book. More fun facts: Sergeant Jay Landsmann was a real police officer - and in fact he plays Lt. Mello from season 3 onwards. There was a real police informant and addict in Baltimore named Bubbles. The deacon who appears as a minor character from season 3 onwards is played by Little Melvin Williams, who was in his time a drug king-pin in Baltimore and the target of a wiretap investigation on which the series' other creator, Ed Burns, worked when he was a cop, and which inspired much of the Wire.
Oh, and the morgue seasons in the first season were filmed in the actual Baltimore city morgue.
Misereatur:
I have to agree with Harry on this.
I have spent about six months of my mandatory military service working with homicide, narcotics and underage crime detectives in my home district (which is one of the most crime-ridden districts in Israel). Take the obvious cultural differences aside, that show is pretty much one-to-one how it was.
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