The Wire: The Complete Series [DVD] [2008]

The Wire has garnered more appreciation than any other television series, including an amazing 9.7 stars at IMDB. But how much of that is hype? Its predecessor Homicide, the life and times of the Baltimore homicide division (broadcasted 1993-98), was based on a book of David Simon, the creator and co-writer of The Wire, and was awarded 9 stars at IMDB. Does that mean that it's almost as good as The Wire? No, it doesn't, so IDBM's star system is fallible. Homicide is a decent series in itself; one could say that it's Baltimore's own Law & Order version (there were even cross-overs with that series), and some of the storylines and characters (like Frank Pembleton, Meldrick Lewis, Al Giordello, Tim Bayliss) are absolute great. But in the end it remained a "crime-of-the-week" series, solid but not particular outstanding, and its overrated stars must be seen more as a hommage to The Wire than that it has earned them on its own merites. The Wire on the other hand, couldn't be more different. It's also situated in Baltimore, David Simon's hometown, but there the simillarities stop. This is storytelling the like of which has seldom entered the small screen. In a mere 60 episodes (compared with the 122 of Homicide) this series show the crumbling decay of urban life from all perspectives - the police, the drug scene, the politics, the corruption, the media, even the school system. It is, literally, breathtaking in its scope. Part of its stunning success is the stellar performance of an amazing cast of almost unknown actors. Part of it is the cinematographic quality of the shows, almost all shot at locations in Baltimore. But most of it is the storytelling. No "crime of the week" or "body of the week" here. This is in effect a 60-episode movie. There is no "Previous in...", there is only a story that rolls on and on, asking the utmost concentration of its audience. You just can't hook into it at any given episode, you really need to start watching from the beginning. That's why it's probably better on DVD than TV. And HBO must be admired for sticking up to his guns! But here you have it, an epic tale in which these writers, directors and actors brought alive the lives of the corner boys, the dealers, the detectives from the squad who try to bring down some of Baltimore's drug czars via wiretapping (hence the title), the top of City Hall, from the Mayor down to the police brass trying to obfusciate the crime rate figures, the city councillors, congressmen, senators, governors, school teachers, the harbour union, journalists, the life and times of people, not just standard characters. It seems impossible to touch so many subjects in just 60 hours, but almost each character has been drawn in sharp lines with a depth that is almost Dickensian in ints intensity. It starts like a cop & robbers show, but it ends as an immense tapestry of people and events that leaves an audience by times gasping for breath. Where have we seen portraits of users and dealers and corrupt police and politicians in such a brutal and yet compassionate way? Many of them are deeply flawed but this series show that they are indeed people, and that is maybe the series' greatest strength. US television series on the whole are not particularly well endowed with storytelling qualities - the reason why West Wing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Farscape or Carnivàle jump out immediately. But The Wire tops them all. Shakespeare, Dickens and Simons rolled in one. There is one drawback; as one reviewer moaned, "Watching this show has ruined a lot of other television shows and movies for me." Well, if that's the price one has to pay, it's a bargain!

As many reviews have written before me, this is more than a cop show. It is a PHD on the socio-political elements of a post-industrial city. It is a dissection of the war on drugs, the betrayal of the working class, the bloated bureaucracy struggling to keep everything together, the schools that teach pupils to pass exams, not to be critical thinkers, the numbers-driven agenda of the police and how the media report it all. The Wire is genuinely a seminal work of fiction, novelistic in its structure and bleak in its portrayal. If you're after an action-driven series, this is NOT it. The story is driven by dialogue, and characterisation, hardly by action. I think over the course of the five series, a gun is barely raised by a police officer and there are no over the top shoot-outs and explosions so often seen on American television. The language is foul (though nobody can make the f-word seem more eloquent than some of these characters), the violence at times vicious and the overall content very mature, but the series is better for it, as it needs the gritty realism to make it believable. Thankfully the show was on HBO, which gave the makers the luxury of not having network rules for such content. And believable it is, of the two creators, David Simon was a journalist and Ed Burns a homicide detective and school teacher. No wonder three of the five seasons concentrate explicitly on their disciplines. I've recently watched The Wire for a second time, and as much as I loved it the first, it was twice as good the second. You can concentrate on the absolutely incredible writing and acting (it is possibly the most quotable show in existence) and pick up on the nuances of direction that you hardly notice the first time. It is slow to start, and is definitely a show you cannot dip in and out of. It is fairly hard to watch, often self-referential, with important events occurring off screen, and characters who you see maybe only once or twice and who's name you definitely only get once, doing something central to the plot five episodes after their brief introduction. However it is a show that rewards the reader with concentration, as it only gets better. For me the fourth season, which concentrates on the pupils at an inner-city middle school, and the teachers who try so desperately to prepare them from a life outside 'the corner' is the best. The performance of the four teenagers who play the main pupils is genuinely stunning, as is the performance of the stone-cold enforcer Chris Partlow, one of the most chilling characters ever seen on big or small screen. Many moments in this season will pull on the heart strings. No matter who your favourite character though, by the end you will realise there is only one - the city of Baltimore itself. I don't think I've ever seen anything so thought-provoking, heart-breaking and hilarious all rolled into one. You know that book that you read every year? That CD you can listen to no matter what your mood? That movie you bought on VHS, DVD, 25-year Special Edition DVD and then blu-ray and holds pride of place on your shelf? This is the TV equivalent. I can genuinely see this becoming an annual watch for me, almost a rite-of-passage, something I just have to do. To sum up: I cannot recommend The Wire enough. It is as good as anything I have ever seen, heard or played - TV, film, music, games, this quite possibly tops the lot. It is no surprise that it has a rating of 9.7 on IMBD, with the highest film having a 9.2. It is without a doubt the greatest TV show I have ever seen. The Sopranos paved the way for making TV a genuinely artistic medium for story telling, but if in the next 100 years The Wire is topped, I will be very surprised.

Where to start? How do you describe the best drama that's ever been created? One that's perfectly written and directed, superbly acted. One that will cause you to become emitionally enthralled, so much so it will become and addiction. The Wire is quite simply the most accomplished piece of television work ever created, one which also leaves a lot of films in the shade. The Wire is the story of the Major Crimes Unit of Baltimore's war on drugs. It spans 5 seasons and plays a key part in each season, whilst each season also focusses on a different area of the City. Season 1 focuses on the streets, season 2, the ports, season three on politics, season 4, the school system and season 5 the newspaper 'The Baltimore Sun'. The writers make it so that all the stories effortlessly interwine; everything that happens will have an impact on something else. This makes for truly compelling viewing, you will watch episode after episode. Episodes rarely end with a cliffhanger, however it easily keeps you gripped. It's not an easy watch, far from it. I didn't enjoy the first episode and found it difficult to follow the story and dialogue. I urge you to stick with it (subtitles aid greatly), those who do will be thoroughly rewarded. The best part about it are the characters. There is an unbelievable pool of characters here; McNulty, Bunk, Lester, Marlo, Prop Joe, Avon, Kima, Rawls, Michael, Dennis 'Cutty' Wise, Daniels, Dukie, Herc, Carv, Tommy Carcetti, Brother Mouzone, Burrell, Prez, Chris, all excellent characters and the list is near endless. However there are 3 which stand out. Bubbles is a drug addict whose journey throughout the 5 series is heart wrenching. Stringer Bell is an incredible character, complex, sinister and superbly portrayed by Idris Elba. However the stand out character is Omar Little. Without doubt one of the best characters, film or TV, ever created. I won't speak about him as I do not want to give anything away; every scene with him in is a joy, be it emotional or full of action. I urge everyone to at least give the Wire a chance, it is one of the most rewarding and emotionally involving dramas ever created. I am about to start the Sopranos tonight, however I fail to see how it will stand up. Unbelievalbe television.

Definitely one of the best tv shows of all time. If you haven’t seen it then stop what you’re doing and watch it!!

The wire is in my opinion one of the best crime dramas of all time, the stories are very well written and that writing is done justice by the excellent performances put in by the actors, there isn't much more that I can say about it that hasn't already been said except that it is a definite must-watch for anyone who is a fan of drama. This blu-ray release looks great and is considerably better than the original, apart from noise in some darker scenes which is understandable due to the age, the picture is very good, importantly it has also has now been adjusted to take advantage of 16:9 (originally the show was broadcast in 1.33:1). It is just a shame that they cut corners at the last minute, while it probably won't be a big deal to most I was disappointed to see that this box-set has the discs for each season inside cardboard sleeves instead of blu-ray cases. I understand that this is a very long series and that something had to be done to reduce the costs and physical footprint of the box-set but I wouldn't have minded paying an extra 10-30% extra for something a bit more robust and practical. Within seconds of opening it up I had several discs almost fall out of the sleeve with was quite annoying to say the least.

Other people have written far better than I can about The Wire. It is honest, engaging, tragic, touching, funny, horrific; it is about real lives and real situations in a real place. It will take two or three episodes to get into it and for it to get going but once you get there it is like nothing else I have seen. The Sopranos is very good but the people it portrays, no matter how engaging, are parasites who have made a choice to be in the family business. The Wire is about ordinary people, in the main, who just haven't had any choices or what choices they have had have been really hard ones. It's about the cops who try to keep a lid on the crime in this place and the teachers who try to give the kids in their care some sort of escape through education but all are failed by the endemic corruption in the system. It shows America as a failed system with a growing, totally degraded urban underclass and a money-grabbing political class which disables politicians who want to do the right thing. It shows us what is wrong by allowing us to meet the victims and the perpetrators in this failed society and those who are trying to keep one group from killing each other and catch those with their fingers in the till! We also meet some chillingly ordinary-looking people, who are the men behind major drug and people trafficking, these are the true monsters. The casting is phenomenal, the characters are believable and they look like real people; the scripts and storylines are likewise faultless. The only regret I have is that I have watched it now and can't ever again experience the feeling of seeing this incredible show for the first time!

The Wire is easily the best TV series of its type I have ever seen. At first I thought it was just another American cop show but within two or three episodes I realised that this was something special. The only problem I had was understanding some of the dialog due to the heavy accents and idiomatic language, especially the Afro Americans. I realised I was missing a lot of the subtlety and many of the interactions and sub plots. My wife bought me this DVD box set and with subtitles on - problem solved. There are lots of reviews talking about the great writing and the great acting and how realistic it is and I cannot disagree but what I would like to mention is the pacing. At first it seems a little slow, because it is not at the frenetic pace of most other shows (like Prison Break for example) but almost without you realising it you get into its rhythm and before you know it the hour is up and you sit there watching the credits and it occurs to you just how much you enjoyed that and wonder if you can spare the time to watch another episode. Many programs are excellent and you can think afterwards, that was good, but none that I have ever experienced before immerse you so deeply and feel so natural in their progression and pacing that it feels like you are watching real life and real people. This whole series is a stunning achievement for everyone involved in its production from the writers to the actors and the whole production crew. If you have not seen it then lucky you, you have a real treat in store.

The Wire is one of the best TV dramas of the last decade. It takes a while to get going - you might not be hooked until halfway through the first series - but it makes a virtue of proceeding quite slowly. Often, instead of focusing on the central story (each series has one big plot/theme), it digresses, and many of its best bits are in the digressions. What makes The Wire unusual is that it's a cop show that refuses merely to be a cop show. It inhabits Baltimore in all its attributes. We see inside the local politics, the local media, community groups, the lives of the city's homeless people, the personal lives of its law enforcers, and above all the lives of its criminals. It's very brave and unusual to show us the criminal side of a community from the criminals' point of view, and The Wire is innovative in being so unflinching in depicting this. It's a far cry from the glossy world of, say, CSI. It also has superb characters. The main one initially is McNulty (Dominic West), but in time you'll probably grow to love the technically skilled Freamon, stick-up man Omar, plain-spoken homicide detectives Bunk and Greggs, drugs kingpin Stringer Bell, addict Bubbles and the striving corner kids, among others. They offer an amazingly rich insight into the culture of a city that's struggling to come to terms with the 21st century. The first four series are outstanding. In my opinion the fifth is less strong. But you will still want to see all five, and this box set contains some illuminating documentaries which reveal how The Wire came to be created.

"The Wire" è un incredibile capolavoro di scrittura, recitazione, ambientazione, un trattato sociologico e una drammaturgia eccezionale per umanesimo, lucidità, impegno e attenzione ai dettagli. Ero partita estremamente prevenuta verso una trama poliziesca che non è il mio genere, ma qui il genere poliziesco diventa parte della vita vera. La visione è consigliatissima! Purtroppo, in Italia è distribuita solo da Sky, con audio originale o doppiaggio, senza sottotitoli in nessuna lingua. Io ho un C2 di listening inglese, ma senza sottotitoli l'audio in baltimorese stretto per me è 95% incomprensibile; il doppiaggio italiano non è malfatto, ma non è l'originale. Questa bella edizione completa permette finalmente di godere dell'audio originale + sottotitoli, che è - per me - l'unico modo serio di guardare una serie. Preciso che i sottotitoli in italiano non sono presenti (io non li userei comunque). Funziona in Italia (è regione 2, edizione inglese). Come annunciato, è usato (un po' ammaccato in 2 scatole su 5) ma i DVD sono in ottime condizioni. D'altra parte, nuovo ha prezzi proibitivi...

...and a box set of The Wire. I'm sure I can't say anything about this series that hasn't been said already ... it's a must watch.

I'm happy with the quality of my purchase. At first they wouldn't play in my 4k bluray player, after doing some troubleshooting I realized my old hdmi cords was the problem. I purchased some new fusion 4k 2.1 hdr 48 bandwidth higher quality hdmi cords & that solved my problem. Now I'm enjoying all the seasons of the legendary series the wire. My only gripe is all the disc it comes with & getting up to change the disc out but when the wifi fails I have all the seasons of the wire to watch.

Excelente pack de la mejor serie de la historia. Es la edición inglesa UK, pero está en español entre otros. -audio: ingles, francés, alemán, español españa, español latino, y otros (danés y finlandés creo) -subtitulos, ingles, francés, alemán, español españa, español latino (aunque son los mismos) y otros, La forma ideal de ver ésta estupenda series es con audio original inglés y subtitulos en español. Aunque para los que le cueste más, pues que se pongan el audio en español. Confirmado, versión inglesa UK pero con audio y subtítulos en español españa. La calidad de video y audio es excelente, se nota la remasterización. El pack contiene 5 estuches individuales con cada una de las temporadas, y dentro de cada estuche los 4 discos con todos los episodios. El listado de episodios está escrito (en inglés) en la parte interna de la caratula de cada estuche. Recomendado al 100%, es exactamente igual que la versión española (salvo por la cajita cuyo texto y sinopsis de la serie está en ingles, detalle irrelevante), pero es que su precio es la mitad que la versión española. Así que ni lo dudes.

No one can argue that The Wire is one of the best TV Series to ever air. Why not give this 20 disc set a much nicer case even as the existing all paper one is functional and may be appealing to those trying to avoid plastic. I compare this to a recent purchase of the TV Series Banshee, another great show, which has each of the four seasons in its own plastic case!! OK, so the world is full of plastic but mine will stay on the shelf and not go into the environment.