Release Date:
10/12/2004
Normally, we want two things from cop shows: gunfights and more gunfights. So it's strange that The Wire, which provides very little of either, is so perfect. Created by the people who revolutionized the cop-show genre with Homicide: Life on the Streets, writer David Simon heads back to Baltimore to tear it another crab chute. Though the show starts off slow, it builds up characters and story lines over the first four episodes. You get to know drug kingpin Avon Barksdale, his business manager Stringer Bell, rabble-rousing cop Jimmy McNulty, and Deputy Commissioner Rawls, who's one of the meanest assholes on the force. Once you're in their world, you become as addicted as the crackheads littering the mean streets, mixed up in the drug game. Even though the only extras are commentaries on three select episodes, Season 1 on its own was worth the wait, if for no other reason than to prove that we're not smoking dust when we call it the best show on TV.