MAKING THE CONNECTION
This American drama has been described as “one of the best and most original series on television in decades” and a “sublime epic of urban realism”. It has a team of writers including leading crime novelists George Pellecanos, Dennis Lehane and Richard Price. It also features an Irish actor in one of the leading roles. So why aren’t more people watching The Wire?
Although it has attracted huge acclaim from the critics, and many of its devoted fans would argue it is superior to The Sopranos, in the US, The Wire has remained cult viewing, with its fifth, and last, season averaging roughly one-fifth of the eight million viewers who tuned in for its mafia stablemate’s final season on HBO.
The bleakly convincing drama has also built up a small but devoted following on this side of the Atlantic despite being ignored by the mainstream channels. Shown only on the FX channel in Britain (available on digital platforms here), viewing figures struggle to get above 50,000. It has built up an Irish fanbase thanks to the progressive scheduling of TG4, which until recently was the only terrestrial channel here to screen The Wire; the fledgling Channel 6 is currently screening the first series.
The fact that the show has stayed somewhat under the radar could also be down to the growing popularity of DVD boxsets. In the case of The Wire, box sets have the advantage of allowing people to catch up with the intricate plots in their own time – although going by anecdotal evidence and the comments on the huge number of internet forums devoted to The Wire, it just means marathon viewing sessions for fans unable to wait for their next fix.
“People tell me they feel like they’ve stumbled upon a secret and they can’t believe nobody else is watching it,” says Dominic West, the British actor who plays detective Jimmy McNulty, the closest thing the show has to a hero, albeit a distinctly flawed one.
Another reason the show hasn’t attracted a larger audience is its labyrinthine, almost novelistic, storylines.
The show’s title refers to the show’s first season, and the wiretap which a team of cops uses in its investigations into a drug gang. However, each season, while based around the complicated inter-relationship of the police, politicians and drug dealers, has explored a different social theme: the ravaging of poorer black neighbourhoods by drug gangs; the erosion of the working classes in post-industrial America; power and corruption; dysfunction within the public education system. This season, the show ventures into the world of newspapers, inspired by the former profession of the show’s co-creator, ex-Baltimore Sun reporter, David Simon.
Another subversive element is the show’s dialogue– much of which is urban slang specific to its setting, the east coast city of Baltimore. This is deliberately unfiltered, leaving viewers to pick it up as they go along, in much the same way as the police officers do. Simon eschews conventional exposition, the main building block of television drama, believing “it sucks the life out of the story”.
He describes The Wire as a “political tract masquerading as a cop show” and calls it “a rebellion of sorts against all the horseshit police procedurals afflicting American television”. Simon is unashamed about making few concessions to the lowest common denominator. When asked in a rare TV interview about the casual viewer, the person who likes to dip in and out of shows, he replied: “F**k the casual viewer”.
Simon doesn’t seem to be surprised – or for that matter, disappointed – that the show has failed to win large audiences: “People don’t want to be reminded about real life,” he says. “They don’t like the fact that our show doesn’t deal in good versus evil and they don’t want to look at this part of America.”
He acknowledges the bleak subject matter doesn’t resonate with people looking for escapist entertainment. “Life isn’t always easy. People don’t always redeem themselves. You know the three things American television is about: kicking ass, blowing things up and finding redemption. Our show doesn’t deal with any of these – apart from the ass kicking.”
Irish actor Aidan Gillen, 40, previously best-known for his role in another groundbreaking show, the Channel Four drama Queer as Folk, stars in The Wire as politician Tommy Carcetti.
“It’s not easy entertainment,” he says of the show. “It presents stuff that perhaps makes people uncomfortable. And it’s not driven by stars, special effects or quick payoffs. But among television shows that are regarded as the best, it’s still out on its own.”
Simon and his team of writers went to admirable lengths to make the show as realistic as possible. Ed Burns, who created the show with Simon, is a former homicide detective while Simon spent years gathering information on drug dealers – and the cops fighting a losing battle in the drugs war. When it came to the world of politics, Simon covered political stories to get a handle on the issues involved, but also added Bill Zorzi, the Baltimore Sun’s political writer, to the writing staff. When it came to the port storyline in season two, Rafael Alvarez, a former reporter whose family had spent three generations in dockland industries, was brought on board.
“We spent weeks getting to know longshoremen and the operations of the port and port unions, just hanging around the shipping terminals for days on end, so as to credibly achieve those voices,” says Simon.
“If you write something that is so credible that the insider will stay with you, then the outsider will follow as well. The Wire is a travelogue of a kind, allowing the average viewer to go where he otherwise would not. He loves being immersed in a new, confusing and possibly dangerous world that he will never see. He likes not knowing every bit of vernacular or idiom. He likes being trusted to acquire information on his terms, to make connections, to take the journey with only his intelligence to guide him.”
Simon’s success was in achieving this authenticity is perhaps best reflected by an anecdote relayed by actor Wendell Pierce, who plays cop ‘Bunk’ Moreland: “The highest compliment came when a police officer told me on the set, ‘They talk about you guys on the real wire.’ One time, they were sitting on this wire, and it was quiet for a real long time, and finally somebody called, and the first thing this guy said was ‘Motherf**ker, what did I say? Don’t call when The Wire’s on.’”
As Simon said in an online farewell letter to fans when the show finished its final season in March, The Wire arrived to little fanfare and modest expectation – it demanded from viewers a delicate, patient consideration and a ridiculous degree of attention to detail.
However, as the show’s small but dedicated fanbase would attest, the effort of matching up the finely-crafted fragments of the dramatic mosaic was more than worth it when the masterpiece came together. As
kind-hearted cop Lester Freamon says in a scene now accorded legendary status by aficionados: “All the pieces matter”.
Season five of The Wire will be shown on TG4 every Monday at from Channel 6 is currently showing season one.
