TV review: The wire season 1

A police operation against drug trade with all his implications.

This is supposed to be the best series ever. I don’t know yet but after one season I can attest that is extremely good stuff.

Basically is one long story that last 13 episodes. It kinda makes sense, if we think about it for a moment in real life nobody solves a murder in 45 minutes.

Realism is the key, gone are the super sexy policemen of NCIS with their infinite resources, in are real life detectives who are still waiting for a computer and must fight a whole system that doesn’t want them to succeed. On the other side there is an honest depiction of drug trafficking that instead of setting everything in black and white actually manages to convey the humanity of all the characters.

This succeeds thanks to a incredible good writing, I still can’t say if it’s the best one but certainly is the best written. The creators, David Simon and Ed Burns, are an ex crime journalist and an ex Homicide detective and bring an unprecedented level of realism. Later in the series they even recruited famous crime novelists like for example Dennis Lehane.

Lately I’ve been watching some episodes of CSI and, boy, does it look old and silly in comparison to this one. Is like watching real life unfold.

The only caveat against it is that being a whole long story is not good for casual viewing, you should start from the beginning and never miss an episode, even better, rent the DVD, you’ll thank me.