All the pieces
The Times let me write about The Wire. It's nothing you don't already know, commissioned as a short entree for newcomers, but it's pleasing to go legit at this late stage of the game. (Incidentally, read David Hepworth's interview with David Simon in the new Word: intelligent stuff.)
posted by Andrew Collins @ 9:13 AM
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15 Comments:
What a coincidence - I purchased The Times today, which I never ususally do. I must have a look for your piece.
Beautiful
can we have less of the wire please? I think I'd prefer more of the mitford sisters.
Thank you.
P
'it's a way of life'
What, like the Word Podcast? You're not wrong. Just finished Season One of the suspiciously-priced 1-5 boxset I picked up last month and can't agree more with the ubiquitous praise being lavished on this show. Outstanding.
I've just finished season three this very evening and, by Christ, it only seems to get leaner, more vital and cumulatively impressive.
My season one copy is out on loan as are the two copies of season two I own, for reasons best not gone into here.
Only two seasons to go - I'm starting to wish I'd paced myself.
Nice piece in The Times. With bugger all on the box the past week, I started watching season one again last Sunday, catching three or four episodes every evening since.
Oddly, I finished season three late last night. To be accurate, it was the early hours of this morning. Just after midnight I had just the final episode of three and decided I couldn't not watch it.
On to season four...
Another new convert here. Three episodes into series two, a week after starting out. With series three in the post it's all coming together but what happens when it's done? Plenty more late nights ahead.
Timbo
The Wire has fast become to NKUS what poker has to Richard Herring's Warming Up - posts I know would be interesting if I enjoyed or had time for said activity, but which until I have time to do I simply force myself to gloss over. Which is tough - finding the blog updated only to find another wire post is a bitter and crashing disappointment! : )
Having said that, I am very nearly ready to go out and buy the Season 1 DVD to find out what all the fuss is about...!
henweb, do it, do it, do it!
The Wire = WIN!
Andrew,
I was wondering if you could shed some light on channel scheduling policies.
The Wire is probably the most talked about show in the U.K. right now. But instead of being on a terrestrial channel at 9 PM, it’s on an under-subscribed satellite channel in the late evening.
This was also true of American shows like The Sopranos, Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show. Until The Wire came along, The Sopranos was praised as the greatest TV show ever made. Yet although it started out being broadcast on C4, it eventually was shunted away to E4. Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show had similarly nomadic existences on BBC 2—always being shown sometime after 10 PM.
Why do TV channels buy these shows and then schedule them somewhere where they’re going to attract the smallest possible audiences? I can understand Seinfeld taking a while to be recognized for the genius sitcom it was. But both The Sopranos and The Wire had already established their reps by the time they reached the U.K. I can understand The Wire being shown on a satellite network to attract subscribers, but why so late?
There’s clearly reasons behind the decisions being made. What are they?
Love the plog and the bodcast, by the way.
In case anyone is interested, season 5 seems to be available on DVD boxset from Amazon from next Monday.
In retrospect, what the hell was season 2 for? It seems a bit misplaced now.
Season 2 just highlighted another part of B-more.
Like Lester normally says "follow the money". Season 2 was about following the containers and drugs from the docks, to The Greeks and then to Prop Joe. It all seems quite logical to me that David Simon decided to focus on that area of the city.
I have a lot of love for Season 2, I am sure a few more people will back me up.
All the charcters on the docks are quality. In Season 2 we also get to see McNulty do some serious drunk drivin', whilst listening to The Pogues.
McNulty visiting the whorehouse is one of funniest and best scenes in the whole series.
Theres the running gag of the fued between Valchek Sobotka
I could go on...
Over on the The Wire / IMDB messageboards they had a fun post that listed The Wire Characters as Star Wars characters. As a Star Wars fan I found this very amusing. So I thought I would share it with you lot.
Omar- Boba Fett
McNulty- Han Solo
Rhonda- Princess Leia
Stringer- Darth Vader (In the end he is simply someone who has succomb to evil but his intentions began to change for the better)
Marlo- Emperor Palpatine
Chris- Darth Maul (silent and deadly)
Snoop- Count Dooku (deadly, never shuts up)
Daniels- Luke Skywalker (The force is strong with this one!)
Prop Joe- Jabba the Hut (they're perfect, almost as if his character was based on him)
Avon- Governer Tarkin (Is that right) But he def holds Stringers Leash haha
Herc and Carver- R2D2 and C3PO
Slim- General Grievous
Freamon- Yoda
Bunk- Chewie
Bubbles- Jar Jar
Hoppers- Storm Troopers
Bunny- Mace Windu
Jay- Lando
Rawls- The Rancor
Kenard- A Jawa
Presbo- Obi Wan (He's smart, but all of his younglings head down the wrong path)
Clay Davis- Watto
Delegate Watkins- Admiral Akbar
I got say I would maybe have Jay as Jabba The Hut,,as he is a bit more slimey/vile than Prop Joe, afterall Jay sits in his office drooling over porn all day.
Someone also stated McNulty would play Jerus Jannick (a palace guard), as that's who Dominic West actually played in The Phantom Menace.
Channel 4 also screwed over The West Wing which was a damn shame. The problem is too many people want to watch My rabid dog wants to suck on your titty milk rather than quality dramas.
Still the great thing about watching it on DVD is that as soon as the credits roll you don't have that damn continuity announcer telling you what "filum" is over on Film 4.
Seinfeld started out on BBC2 at nine o'clock but it didn't get the ratings. Then again, the first season, while it certainly had its moments, hadn't quite got there yet.
I may be wrong but I think Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show were sold by Sony - or Columbia Tristar as it was then - so maybe that was why they were scheduled together. Given the language of the latter, there's an obvious reason why it was on later in the evening.
what the hell was season 2 for?
Pah, the season on the docks is one of my favourites. Almost at the end of season four now. Interesting to see how the humour evident in the previous years has been replaced with utter despair.
Squallyshowers - It's because FX bought it. It's as simple as that. They saw it and liked it - and made an offer and won the UK rights. FX are a channel in their own right, with their own acquisition budget and they will compete for content along with the terrestrials, Sky etc
FX is a channel that brings over quality imports and has brought the public ‘The Wire’. ‘Dexter’, ‘Sleeper Cell’ etc The Wire gets around 150,000 viewers on each premiere showing, but being a cable channel it will of course get multiple showings. In any one week it reaches over a million people – and by the end of a series run once marathons and catch ups occur it will be over two million. One in thirty people in the UK will see each episode ‘The Wire’ on FX. It wouldn’t get that much more on BBC and C4 Heroes got around 3 million people on BBC – not that much difference to what ‘The Wire’ achieves on FX.
10 million households have Sky in the UK, and 3 million have Virgin, Tiscali etc. FX is available to almost every Pay TV home. I wouldn't call it under subscribed. The TV landscape is changing and good content doesn’t have to exist on a couple of terrestrial channels.
FX cares for, and promotes, a show like ‘The Wire’ with more passion and love than the BBC will ever do. Why should quality only be on the BBC or C4? Channels like FX are doing the job that C4 did back in the eighties. It sickened me when ITV bought Dexter after FX made it and nurtuted it in the UK. They then cut it to shreds and messed around with the tx times.
‘The Wire’ is fine on FX and doesn’t need moving.
Marc
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