I've seen both the SD/4:3 version (twice) and the HD/widescreen version (once). I prefer the HD/widescreen version.
If you have not seen The Wire, here are some suggestions:
* Watch it with subtitles, so you can understand the slang of the different subcultures of Baltimore. Otherwise, it's easy to miss many important details. The actors -- many of whom are actual former gang members, police officers, judges, politicians, teachers, etc. from the city Baltimore, speak as the characters would in real life -- not always in easy-to-understand dialects or accents.
* Bookmark the Wikipedia page on The Wire's characters, so you can look them up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Wire_characters -- there are well over a hundred important characters, and sometimes it's a good idea to pause the show and look a character up to refresh your memory if you don't remember a particular name.
* If you're not naturally interested in Baltimore's police and drug gang subcultures, you may find the first season a bit slow and much of the dialogue full of seemingly unnecessary detail. I would recommend sticking with it through at least the beginning of the second season, which is mainly about longshoremen and unions, before passing judgment. The Wire is not about police, nor about drug gangs. It's about the city of Baltimore.
It's great, but it's also slow. I feel like asking someone to stick with it through 18 hours to get to the "good part" is at best inconsiderate of their time.
Much like GOT, either it grabs you enough to continue in the first few episodes or it doesn't. It's not like it changes the speed of exposition and character development. Unlike GOT it doesn't get worse with time.
Do you really find it slow? Compared to the Sopranos or the West Wing (which were the two other main shows on around the time I think?), I always found the Wire to be more accessible. Each season has a pretty strong driving plot.
Compared to some of the really slow Sopranos seasons (I remember the Carmela-Furio season that just dragged on and on) it’s practically 24 :)
It's not like there's a lot of action going on most of the time--it's mostly people talking. Which is fine! But not everybody likes that kind of show. It also doesn't have the same addictive amount of leaving each episode on a cliffhanger the way more recent shows are written.
I never watched the Sopranos or West Wing, so I can't speak to them. I enjoyed The Wire (bought the box set!), but it's still a slow-paced drama. If that's your jam, it's fantastic. If it's not, it's still worth a shot (it's that good), but it's not "try it for 18 hours if you don't like the genre" good. All IMO of course. And full disclosure: I'm not a big fan of dramas, but The Wire still grabbed me. Hence my caution that it's somewhat slow compared to other fare.
I should watch it again, it's been a long time and it is worth it.
Despite being similarly slow, The West Wing was highly accessible to its intended audience because the setting was easily digestible, because the dialogue was a continual sugar hit of witty banter, and because starry-eyed optimism / moral certainty tends to be comforting.
I disagree with this, but I know where you're coming from.
I don't think it's slow necessarily, but it's very disorientating (especially at first). Because of this, the whole first season can fail to make any sense, and so feel slow. You miss out on a lot of the value that the characters bring because you don't know WTF is going on.
I tried 2 or 3 times at least to get into it, always failing a few episodes into series one. It took a further watch with the mindset of "I'm going to watch regardless, and trust the recommendations that brought me to it". By the end of the first series, I understood the slang/characters/plot well enough to be rewarding by the rich characters and relationships and loved it. From there all the way to the end of the final series it was plain sailing.
I don't think there's many other series that I've had that experience with, and I really wholeheartedly recommend struggling through the first series (and with subtitles is a great idea), as the whole thing is my favourite TV show of all time.
I think you're right that it doesn't have any big explosive events necessarily, but the story is so great that I don't think it needs the artificial cliffhanger-ness that other 'faster' series may have.
I don't think it's slow but it doesn't explain itself. When you see an event or character interaction without much context, it seems irrelevant and doesn't register so it might feel like nothing is happening. When I rewatch it now, I find it fast pace with no filler. I can watch McNulty play with tide tables gurgling with joy at the delicious payoff to come but if you don't know the payoff, it no doubt just feels like a dude with some paper.
As a Brit, I have no wish for subtitles. I found no difficulty with the slang or accent. There are many parts of the UK that are much more indecipherable!
I've been enjoying the podcast Way Down In The Hole as an episode by episode recap having already watched it through a few times. Stacked with extra trivia and the insight of two black hosts adds things I didn't see.
One thing is when The Wire and The Sopranos originally aired it was weekly and if there were any hanging plot threads the viewers would just have to stew in their own theories about what ifs, I remember lots of times wondering about the fate of characters and waiting weeks or years (Drea while the FBI was using her or that Russian in Jersey Pine Barrens? or who was the serial killer? in the projects in The Wire) for resolution and this was prior to when websites covered shows or when I was aware of internet groups/discussions dedicated to the shows, also on Sunday night before the Sopranos was Sex and the City and also airing on HBO was Six Feet Under (I think after The Sopranos when both were live) - so even just consuming one episode a week of these shows was compelling at the time to me for a weeks worth of scheduled TV viewing.
> Much like GOT, either it grabs you enough to continue in the first few episodes or it doesn't.
I stopped after the first episode. It seemed neat but it was just displaced by other stuff. Then around the third or fourth or so season was being aired, my coworkers were talking about it and I dove back in.
Now after reading this thread I'm thinking I should dive into The Wire next.
honestly I disagree. I found the show pretty boring at first, but I stuck with it on the advice of a friend and due to the universal acclaim. I've now watched it at least five times, and I still enjoyed it as much the last time as almost any other show. some of the subtler details may be hard to appreciate if you aren't really familiar with baltimore.
It's funny you mention subtitles. I'm English, with just a smattering of French when I watched The Wire (that is, I'm definitely not a polyglot) and when I watched it I hooked into the language really quickly, revelled in it in fact, and didn't need subtitles at all - but I also know friends that really struggled. I think it helped that at the time I was only working a three-day week and didn't have kids: one of the most glorious memories of The Wire for me was getting Series 3 as a DVD box set through the post just after it was released (I was in Scotland at the time, and didn't have access to HBO) and watched the entire series in one day with just occasional breaks for food and drinks.
When I first started watching The Wire, I had to use subtitles. The slang for a non-native was almost impenetrable. Now after I've watched the whole series four or five times (I don't remember anymore), I can quote every scene and have a good understanding of the dialog. I definitely learned something.
This is funny btw, but I highly value most of David Simon's series, and I've watched Treme, Generation Kill and The Deuce many times over. I didn't really like any of these series on my first watch, but something pulled me back for rewatch. I'm glad it did. I think I've grown as a person while going through the stories they tell; all these series are now my absolute all-time favorite television.
> The slang for a non-native was almost impenetrable.
I never thought about this. Having grown up in near NYC and Balitmore shortly before The Wire it still seemed like there were things I missed. I can imagine even with subtitles there are some things that aren’t fully understood immediately just with word play.
I grew up in urban DC + public schools and I found it relatively understandable without subtitles, although perhaps not every single thing (some specific slang terms).
> When I first started watching The Wire, I had to use subtitles. The slang for a non-native was almost impenetrable.
And yet Dominic West/Jimmy McNulty and Idris Elba/Stringer Bell are English and Aidan Gillen/Tommy Carcetti is Irish.
Idris Elba does an excellent job, but it’s a little easier for him since he’s given the most slang and dialect to use. Dominic West sounds American at least, but to people who know it, he doesn’t really capture the ‘Bawlmer’ accent. With respect to accent, Aidan Gillen is not great. It’s not quite “Littlefinger on the Chesapeake Bay”, but he never sounds comfortable in the accent. That it's easily overlooked is a credit to the overall greatness of the show.
> Idris Elba does an excellent job, but it’s a little easier for him since he’s given the most slang and dialect to use.
Strangely, most of the significant characters in the drug trade are missing a Baltimore accent. I'm not really sure what accent Idris Elba is going for though it sounds vaguely New York City, while Method Man clearly sounds like a New Yorker when his character is from Baltimore. Wood Harris, who played Stringer's partner Avon Barksdale, sounds like he's from Chicago. The only ones speaking in a Baltimore accent are Proposition Joe, Slim Charles, and Snoop Pearson.
I'm not completely sure was it planned, but Stringer Bell was a character who attended community college, got his food from an organic food market, didn't want to be connected with the street. Almost like "coastal elite" and the New York slang would make sense there.
>With respect to accent, Aidan Gillen is not great. It’s not quite “Littlefinger on the Chesapeake Bay”, but he never sounds comfortable in the accent.
To be honest, his accent/affectation in Game of Thrones also always sounded kind of forced and uncomfortable to me. Still love his performance in both shows, though.
Would you be surprised if I told you that you can be both an 'actual former gang members, police officers, judges, politicians, teachers, etc' and simultaneously a 'professional actor'?
What I mean is that they were hired based on their acting CV and auditions. It turns out that a very small number of mostly minor actors had some run in with the law in their youth, and there is one actor who had been selling drugs decades before. This story got media play when The Wire was on TV and people thought that the producers had gone out and hired actual gang members for the cast. This isn’t true. They went through the usual screen actors guild and casting process. The iconic characters people remember are mostly stage actors, and not from Baltimore (two of the main characters are British).
In addition to Snoop, the actual Jay Landsman (real person) plays a sergeant in the wire, though it's a small part and he does not play Jay Landsman (the character).
Additionally, the actor who plays detective Ed Norris is the former police commissioner for Baltimore and the former Police Superintendent for the state of Maryland.
For those looking for something more focused in terms of plotline and scope within the same genre, David Simon also wrote and produced The Corner (2000) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0224853/
> The Wire is not about police, nor about drug gangs. It’s about the city of Baltimore.
It definitely takes place in Baltimore, and is based upon experiences of David Simon while a newspaper reporter in Baltimore, but it definitely is about police and various types of crime (most often drug related). It is also about education, the news industry, and city government policies and bureaucracy. Having grown up in Philly I can assure you it could easily have been set in that location with no major changes to the story. In this respect, Baltimore is just a stand in for East Coast.
I read it was more about institutional dysfunction. It examines a different one (police, media, unions, schools, politics, etc) and we see how what the people want or do doesn't really matter a lot in the end - the system has a life of its own and keeps trucking on.
Then moving to the next city series, Treme, and the same issues are there with New Orleans. Though the series puts much more focus on music and musicians, that somehow can be momentarily outside of this system just to get sucked in again.
The Deuce sees the system operating in New York from 70's to the late 80's. Similarities with The Wire and Treme are in that series too regarding institutions, but the focus is on porn and gentrification.
> Watch it with subtitles, so you can understand the slang of the different subcultures of Baltimore.
As a non-native English speaker, I can confirm that the dialog was basically impenetrable for me without subtitles. Even with subtitles, it took 4-5 episodes before I could confidently claim to be understanding everything the characters were saying. Definitely a revelation for me that this kind of variation exists among English speakers in the same city/country.
"The actors -- many of whom are actual former gang members ..."
One of the funniest things I have ever heard was a radio interview with Richard Price - one of the writers of The Wire.
He describes how he drove one of the actual Baltimore gang members, in his car - I think from Baltimore to Philly - and while they were driving, they were listening to NPR, and A Prairie Home Companion came on the radio ...
... and this gang member from Baltimore was flabbergasted and wanted to know just What. The. Fuck. this was on the radio ...
I also liked the HD version - when I was watching it (I think around 2014?) about half way through the HD was pulled and everything switched to SD on the streaming service. I googled at the time and found others noticed this too.
It was jarring enough that I stopped watching it as a result, might be time to try again (I was on Season 3), it was a great show from what I saw up to that point.
> If you're not naturally interested in Baltimore's police and drug gang subcultures, you may find the first season a bit slow and much of the dialogue full of seemingly unnecessary detail. I would recommend sticking with it through at least the beginning of the second season, which is mainly about longshoremen and unions, before passing judgment.
I usually recommend people make it through season 2 before deciding they're in it for the long haul (bearing in mind that 2 seasons is already quite a haul, especially for such a dense show). It's my experience that people get turned off by the jump from the expected gangsters-and-cops to the more "boring" Longshore men storyline (though like many, I appreciated season 2 a lot more in retrospect).
I think the key to season 2 is to simply internalize that it's not season 1. Enjoy it for its own brilliance, and don't worry, the season 1 vibe will be back.
Also how poverty drives people into crime. How the longshoremen were thinking of being above the black gangsters, except when the money runs out, and people want better life. It's an essential season of The Wire.
> But it makes sense, right? Real corruption and crime isn't always about drugs and shotguns.
I think the reaction is just that it's unexpected. Everyone expects there to be crime and corruption in unions, but they don't consider it to be as glamorous or interesting as the gangsters-and-cops tropes that they're used to, and that The Wire seemed to many to be about until season 2.
In the context of Simon's slowly-expanding lens of the American city, it makes complete sense, but most viewers aren't aware of that right at the beginning.
> though like many, I appreciated season 2 a lot more in retrospect
I just finished my third rewatch last night and I honestly like season 2 more each time I watch it. It might be my second favorite season after season 4.
I also have an improved opinion of season 5 after the latest re-watch. It always seems like it goes off the rails in the early in the season, but those story lines come around and resolve themselves in reasonable ways.
It's true that they cast a lot of locals, but mostly in the background roles. Practically all of the leads and recurring characters were cast out of New York City.
It's a bit of a thing here. DC and Baltimore actors will take jobs in New York to get NYC credits on their resumes. They'll sometimes get post office boxes in NYC just so that casting directors won't write them off, then drive up for the actual audition. Only then will they find it possible to get cast for major projects being filmed in the city where they live.
The locals will get background work, hoping to be noticed, and occasionally it even happens.
It's not that there's resentment to The Wire or Homicide, which really kick-started the local television industry. But there's a bitter irony of playing second-fiddle (and third-fiddle) to so many out of towners in a city with a thriving industry and a lot of local talent.
Acting is, of course, a crummy line of work to be in regardless. It's not like your Broadway dreams come true just by moving up I-95.
> Still, being equally honest here, there can be no denying that an ever-greater portion of the television audience has HD widescreen televisions staring at them from across the living room, and that they feel notably oppressed if all of their entertainments do not advantage themselves of the new hardware. It vexes them in the same way that many with color television sets were long ago bothered by the anachronism of black-and-white films, even carefully conceived black-and-white films. For them, The Wire seems frustrating or inaccessible – even more so than we intended it. And, hey, we are always in it to tell people a story, first and foremost. If a new format brings a few more thirsty critters to the water’s edge, then so be it.
It's too bad they don't offer a 4:3 HD version for those of us who care about high definition but want to respect the original composition. Same goes for Buffy, which is a complete mess in 16:9.
I watch many old movies on my 1080p projector to a 16:9 100" screen and don't mind side bars at all.
Yeah that seems a real missed opportunity here. I’ve never seen the show but admit that old SD programmes tend to fall down the list of shows to watch.
To have the opportunity to see a high-fidelity but true-to-composition version would really pique my interest. I guess managing and serving two different versions probably isn’t straightforward, but I believe Disney already does it with The Simpsons, so perhaps one day there will be a ‘remastered’ original cut.
>I’ve never seen the show but admit that old SD programmes tend to fall down the list of shows to watch.
I feel this has a lot to do with the ~20 min episode + cliffhanger format. It's a pretty striking difference to the Netflix/HBO shows. Those are generally longer and rely much less on cliffhangers. Plus, less "in case you missed last week, let us explain again" type dialog and scenes.
>"in case you missed last week, let us explain again"
netflix, amazon and etc (even self-hosted solutions like plex) often have "skip the intro buttons" which I think is a good solution to the problem of complex plots and non-binge watchers. If you're watching a complicated show and you're not watching episodes in a fairly tight timeframe, it can be tough for some to keep all the plotlines straight. Let those who want or need it have the 30-60 second recap plus mood-setting intro, but let frequent flyers cut the line with the push of a button.
They should split the difference with 14:9. HD upconversions wouldn't be nearly so bad without the aggressive cropping. The whiners who can't tolerate any black bars can just stretch or scale.
> It's too bad they don't offer a 4:3 HD version for those of us who care about high definition but want to respect the original composition
You can make an approximation of one yourself. In VLC in the menu you can select
Video > Crop > 4:3
I just compared the pilot scene mentioned in the article with Wee Bey, D and the neon signs, and the result is not much different except for the image fidelity.
On scenes where they've pulled in tighter on the 16:9 version, that's going to crop things out. There's two 16:9 versions in the article and it seems like the second one, where they chose to pull in tighter, would crop, or nearly so, the actors out of the frame:
I was wondering this myself. It seems like a natural extension of the film scanning and editing process that they could put out an HD 4:3 version.
As usual it probably comes down to cost and money - as Simon writes, it was hard enough to get the edit right and on time for the 16:9 version, and who knows how much of that effort would have to be duplicated for 4:3, even with the original as a guide. Still, it seems a missed opportunity.
I've watched it in 4:3 and 16:9. there are a few scenes that look awkward in 16:9, but for the most part they did a great job on the HD cut, easy to forget it was originally aired in 4:3.
I find the show to be incredible, not just in terms of rhetoric but actually just aesthetically, it's got very pleasing visuals and there is no overuse of edits and sound.
But sometimes i see the way david simon acts on twitter and i reconsider how good the show actually was. It's hard to believe it was even made by him.
Season 1 was one of the best series I've seen in TV. I'm not sure if the rest of the season lives up to it. Or I could be wrong. I remember the start of Season 2 was kinda slow.
(4) successfully spins the most plates, introduces some of the best characters, brings both the politics and schools into the story, still manages one of the cleanest and most coherent narratives of the series, and opens with "fuck a charge, this here's a gunpowder activated, 27 caliber, full auto no kickback nail-throwing mayhem". It is flawless.
(1) Is the best-told story in the series.
(2) Is great for all the reasons you'd say it is. For me, it's where they first really stick the landing on Baltimore being the main character of the show, rather than it being just an HBO version of Homicide.
There is a lot of distance between 3 and 5, but there isn't that much difference between 1, 2, 3, and 4; I could see how anybody would pick any of those as their favorite, though (4) is the clear right answer.
- ziggy is annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnoying and a lot of people don't want to watch a 12 episode train wreck.
- it's totally different than season 1
3 has the most epic plot swing, but I know people who really found hamsterdam unbelievable.
4 is quite tight, but it's about schools, maybe it didn't jive with you. I thought it was great.
5 has issues because it was about too new of a phenomenon (tried to pull in the NYT's journalist making up stories which had happened a year before). The rest of the stories backing the seasons were about well digested topics they could be quite sage on. I actually really like season 5.
Also the wrap up to the series (the outtro) is amazing end to a series IMHO.
I found Ziggy a great character and important part of the series when watching the series for the second (or third) time. I can find similarities between him and D'Angelo: both of them do not really fit the frame they've born into. Both of them try to get out from that frame.
The whole season 2 is about how people turn into criminals and why. This time it happens to white working class men and this is one of the reasons I find the second season essential.
Agree on season 4 -- it's possibly the most emotionally powerful, eye-opening TV I've ever watched. I find it less easy to choose a second-best between 1, 2 and 3. 5 is dead-last, without a doubt.
> I know the show was on nearly 20 years ago but I only watched it 2 months ago for the first time
That's why IMO significant spoilers should be marked indefinitely. Sure it's an old show, but tons of people were too young to have watched it at the time. They deserve a fighting chance at seeing it unspoiled.
There may be exceptions to this rule for spoilers that are a core part of culture (say, parental relationships in the Star Wars universe), but it's free to mark spoilers as such. People can feel free to ignore such warnings if they'd like.
I must say, I tried rewatching the first season but stopped when police who visited a suspected rape just told the purported victim to shut up and do what a woman has to do, basically. Sketchy and beyond. A farce compared with 'The Wire'. Try 'The Corner' instead.
I'm currently watching this TV show for the 8th time. I never got tired specially with the HD version. It is so good and I find it will age incredibly.
I haven't read the Corner but the Homicide book was definitely much richer than the series. As could be expected from a book vs tv show the book contains a lot more reflection and introspection.
> an ever-greater portion of the television audience has HD widescreen televisions staring at them from across the living room, and that they feel notably oppressed if all of their entertainments do not advantage themselves of the new hardware. It vexes them in the same way that many with color television sets were long ago bothered by the anachronism of black-and-white films, even carefully conceived black-and-white films.
"oppressed", seriously ?!
Is this actually backed by some studies, or is this just the rationalization behind marketing pushing widescreen to be seen at the point of 'progress' ?
For my part, as a new viewer, I'd rather have the original vision even if it's in 4:3, rather than an unknown quality 16:9 one…
And speaking of black and white films, I have seen a recent one named "Cold War" (a love story, actually), and 15 minutes in, had completely forgotten that it was B&W…
There are a few other shows from some of the same creators:
- Treme tells a story about New Orleans after Katrina. Instead of focusing on crime, it goes with music, food and death.
- The Deuce's from 70's and 80's New York sex industry and gentrification.
Both of these are quite similar and at the same time different compared to The Wire. I like all of them a lot, but there are different opinions, specifically for Treme which never gathered any large audience.
Anyhow, if you ask this question, you might need to see them both.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadIf you have not seen The Wire, here are some suggestions:
* Watch it with subtitles, so you can understand the slang of the different subcultures of Baltimore. Otherwise, it's easy to miss many important details. The actors -- many of whom are actual former gang members, police officers, judges, politicians, teachers, etc. from the city Baltimore, speak as the characters would in real life -- not always in easy-to-understand dialects or accents.
* Bookmark the Wikipedia page on The Wire's characters, so you can look them up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Wire_characters -- there are well over a hundred important characters, and sometimes it's a good idea to pause the show and look a character up to refresh your memory if you don't remember a particular name.
* If you're not naturally interested in Baltimore's police and drug gang subcultures, you may find the first season a bit slow and much of the dialogue full of seemingly unnecessary detail. I would recommend sticking with it through at least the beginning of the second season, which is mainly about longshoremen and unions, before passing judgment. The Wire is not about police, nor about drug gangs. It's about the city of Baltimore.
Much like GOT, either it grabs you enough to continue in the first few episodes or it doesn't. It's not like it changes the speed of exposition and character development. Unlike GOT it doesn't get worse with time.
Watching it with subtitles is good advice.
Compared to some of the really slow Sopranos seasons (I remember the Carmela-Furio season that just dragged on and on) it’s practically 24 :)
I never watched the Sopranos or West Wing, so I can't speak to them. I enjoyed The Wire (bought the box set!), but it's still a slow-paced drama. If that's your jam, it's fantastic. If it's not, it's still worth a shot (it's that good), but it's not "try it for 18 hours if you don't like the genre" good. All IMO of course. And full disclosure: I'm not a big fan of dramas, but The Wire still grabbed me. Hence my caution that it's somewhat slow compared to other fare.
I should watch it again, it's been a long time and it is worth it.
I don't think it's slow necessarily, but it's very disorientating (especially at first). Because of this, the whole first season can fail to make any sense, and so feel slow. You miss out on a lot of the value that the characters bring because you don't know WTF is going on.
I tried 2 or 3 times at least to get into it, always failing a few episodes into series one. It took a further watch with the mindset of "I'm going to watch regardless, and trust the recommendations that brought me to it". By the end of the first series, I understood the slang/characters/plot well enough to be rewarding by the rich characters and relationships and loved it. From there all the way to the end of the final series it was plain sailing.
I don't think there's many other series that I've had that experience with, and I really wholeheartedly recommend struggling through the first series (and with subtitles is a great idea), as the whole thing is my favourite TV show of all time.
I think you're right that it doesn't have any big explosive events necessarily, but the story is so great that I don't think it needs the artificial cliffhanger-ness that other 'faster' series may have.
As a Brit, I have no wish for subtitles. I found no difficulty with the slang or accent. There are many parts of the UK that are much more indecipherable!
I've been enjoying the podcast Way Down In The Hole as an episode by episode recap having already watched it through a few times. Stacked with extra trivia and the insight of two black hosts adds things I didn't see.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-wire-way-down-in-t...
Is there any other similar podcasts I should listen? Especially on culture that is outside of my white European sphere?
I stopped after the first episode. It seemed neat but it was just displaced by other stuff. Then around the third or fourth or so season was being aired, my coworkers were talking about it and I dove back in.
Now after reading this thread I'm thinking I should dive into The Wire next.
This is funny btw, but I highly value most of David Simon's series, and I've watched Treme, Generation Kill and The Deuce many times over. I didn't really like any of these series on my first watch, but something pulled me back for rewatch. I'm glad it did. I think I've grown as a person while going through the stories they tell; all these series are now my absolute all-time favorite television.
I never thought about this. Having grown up in near NYC and Balitmore shortly before The Wire it still seemed like there were things I missed. I can imagine even with subtitles there are some things that aren’t fully understood immediately just with word play.
I'd never really considered this. Grew up in the south-eastern US, with one side of the family from the Northern Neck of Virginia.
Accent was definitely Baltimore, but I never had an issue.
The Chesapeake Bay definitely has a lot of interesting accents on various sides, though: http://aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMapCanada
But it's an interesting show anyway, even without the details.
And I mean, they do have a scene where the cops have to hire a local lady who speaks the slang well to transcribe some of the conversations.
And yet Dominic West/Jimmy McNulty and Idris Elba/Stringer Bell are English and Aidan Gillen/Tommy Carcetti is Irish.
Idris Elba does an excellent job, but it’s a little easier for him since he’s given the most slang and dialect to use. Dominic West sounds American at least, but to people who know it, he doesn’t really capture the ‘Bawlmer’ accent. With respect to accent, Aidan Gillen is not great. It’s not quite “Littlefinger on the Chesapeake Bay”, but he never sounds comfortable in the accent. That it's easily overlooked is a credit to the overall greatness of the show.
Strangely, most of the significant characters in the drug trade are missing a Baltimore accent. I'm not really sure what accent Idris Elba is going for though it sounds vaguely New York City, while Method Man clearly sounds like a New Yorker when his character is from Baltimore. Wood Harris, who played Stringer's partner Avon Barksdale, sounds like he's from Chicago. The only ones speaking in a Baltimore accent are Proposition Joe, Slim Charles, and Snoop Pearson.
To be honest, his accent/affectation in Game of Thrones also always sounded kind of forced and uncomfortable to me. Still love his performance in both shows, though.
This is a persistent myth. They were all professional actors.
I think the only actor to that description that played a 'major' role on the show was the one who played Snoop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicia_Pearson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Andrews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvin_Williams_(actor)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Norris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_D%27Addario
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Landsman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Burton_(Baltimore)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Earle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Zorzi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwan_Glover
And don't forget the show's creators:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Simon - former journalist at the Baltimore Sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Burns - former Baltimore police and public school teacher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Earle
as posted above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25626484
I'm currently watching the Wire because I was convinced by another HN comment last week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25527957
It definitely takes place in Baltimore, and is based upon experiences of David Simon while a newspaper reporter in Baltimore, but it definitely is about police and various types of crime (most often drug related). It is also about education, the news industry, and city government policies and bureaucracy. Having grown up in Philly I can assure you it could easily have been set in that location with no major changes to the story. In this respect, Baltimore is just a stand in for East Coast.
The Deuce sees the system operating in New York from 70's to the late 80's. Similarities with The Wire and Treme are in that series too regarding institutions, but the focus is on porn and gentrification.
As a non-native English speaker, I can confirm that the dialog was basically impenetrable for me without subtitles. Even with subtitles, it took 4-5 episodes before I could confidently claim to be understanding everything the characters were saying. Definitely a revelation for me that this kind of variation exists among English speakers in the same city/country.
One of the funniest things I have ever heard was a radio interview with Richard Price - one of the writers of The Wire.
He describes how he drove one of the actual Baltimore gang members, in his car - I think from Baltimore to Philly - and while they were driving, they were listening to NPR, and A Prairie Home Companion came on the radio ...
... and this gang member from Baltimore was flabbergasted and wanted to know just What. The. Fuck. this was on the radio ...
It was jarring enough that I stopped watching it as a result, might be time to try again (I was on Season 3), it was a great show from what I saw up to that point.
I usually recommend people make it through season 2 before deciding they're in it for the long haul (bearing in mind that 2 seasons is already quite a haul, especially for such a dense show). It's my experience that people get turned off by the jump from the expected gangsters-and-cops to the more "boring" Longshore men storyline (though like many, I appreciated season 2 a lot more in retrospect).
"Blegh. Unions. Politics. Yawn."
But it makes sense, right? Real corruption and crime isn't always about drugs and shotguns.
I think the reaction is just that it's unexpected. Everyone expects there to be crime and corruption in unions, but they don't consider it to be as glamorous or interesting as the gangsters-and-cops tropes that they're used to, and that The Wire seemed to many to be about until season 2.
In the context of Simon's slowly-expanding lens of the American city, it makes complete sense, but most viewers aren't aware of that right at the beginning.
I just finished my third rewatch last night and I honestly like season 2 more each time I watch it. It might be my second favorite season after season 4.
It's a bit of a thing here. DC and Baltimore actors will take jobs in New York to get NYC credits on their resumes. They'll sometimes get post office boxes in NYC just so that casting directors won't write them off, then drive up for the actual audition. Only then will they find it possible to get cast for major projects being filmed in the city where they live.
The locals will get background work, hoping to be noticed, and occasionally it even happens.
It's not that there's resentment to The Wire or Homicide, which really kick-started the local television industry. But there's a bitter irony of playing second-fiddle (and third-fiddle) to so many out of towners in a city with a thriving industry and a lot of local talent.
Acting is, of course, a crummy line of work to be in regardless. It's not like your Broadway dreams come true just by moving up I-95.
It's too bad they don't offer a 4:3 HD version for those of us who care about high definition but want to respect the original composition. Same goes for Buffy, which is a complete mess in 16:9.
I watch many old movies on my 1080p projector to a 16:9 100" screen and don't mind side bars at all.
To have the opportunity to see a high-fidelity but true-to-composition version would really pique my interest. I guess managing and serving two different versions probably isn’t straightforward, but I believe Disney already does it with The Simpsons, so perhaps one day there will be a ‘remastered’ original cut.
I feel this has a lot to do with the ~20 min episode + cliffhanger format. It's a pretty striking difference to the Netflix/HBO shows. Those are generally longer and rely much less on cliffhangers. Plus, less "in case you missed last week, let us explain again" type dialog and scenes.
netflix, amazon and etc (even self-hosted solutions like plex) often have "skip the intro buttons" which I think is a good solution to the problem of complex plots and non-binge watchers. If you're watching a complicated show and you're not watching episodes in a fairly tight timeframe, it can be tough for some to keep all the plotlines straight. Let those who want or need it have the 30-60 second recap plus mood-setting intro, but let frequent flyers cut the line with the push of a button.
You can make an approximation of one yourself. In VLC in the menu you can select
Video > Crop > 4:3
I just compared the pilot scene mentioned in the article with Wee Bey, D and the neon signs, and the result is not much different except for the image fidelity.
https://youtu.be/gis0V4f6UCs?t=56
Edit: I did this by hand on my iPad, but it should be pretty close. The original 4:3 vs the 16:9 cropped to 4:3:
https://ibb.co/CKnZ63Q
https://ibb.co/C94WmRg
The actors aren't cropped out, but it's close.
As usual it probably comes down to cost and money - as Simon writes, it was hard enough to get the edit right and on time for the 16:9 version, and who knows how much of that effort would have to be duplicated for 4:3, even with the original as a guide. Still, it seems a missed opportunity.
But sometimes i see the way david simon acts on twitter and i reconsider how good the show actually was. It's hard to believe it was even made by him.
He definitely does not pull his punches.
Extreme example might be Cosby and Cosby Show.
3 is a lot of people's favorite season and I understand why. The show is just very, very good.
2 holds up better than any other season and it’s not actually that close.
(1) Is the best-told story in the series.
(2) Is great for all the reasons you'd say it is. For me, it's where they first really stick the landing on Baltimore being the main character of the show, rather than it being just an HBO version of Homicide.
There is a lot of distance between 3 and 5, but there isn't that much difference between 1, 2, 3, and 4; I could see how anybody would pick any of those as their favorite, though (4) is the clear right answer.
- It has few likable bad guys
- ziggy is annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnoying and a lot of people don't want to watch a 12 episode train wreck.
- it's totally different than season 1
3 has the most epic plot swing, but I know people who really found hamsterdam unbelievable.
4 is quite tight, but it's about schools, maybe it didn't jive with you. I thought it was great.
5 has issues because it was about too new of a phenomenon (tried to pull in the NYT's journalist making up stories which had happened a year before). The rest of the stories backing the seasons were about well digested topics they could be quite sage on. I actually really like season 5.
Also the wrap up to the series (the outtro) is amazing end to a series IMHO.
Season 5 is a mess.
"did he have hands? did he have a face? yes? then it wasn't us. idiot." fucking brutal.
it's interesting that, aside from certain politicians, the greeks are the only people that really "win" in the show.
The whole season 2 is about how people turn into criminals and why. This time it happens to white working class men and this is one of the reasons I find the second season essential.
I know the show was on nearly 20 years ago but I only watched it 2 months ago for the first time :)
That's why IMO significant spoilers should be marked indefinitely. Sure it's an old show, but tons of people were too young to have watched it at the time. They deserve a fighting chance at seeing it unspoiled.
There may be exceptions to this rule for spoilers that are a core part of culture (say, parental relationships in the Star Wars universe), but it's free to mark spoilers as such. People can feel free to ignore such warnings if they'd like.
IMDB shows no series using the name "The Corner" other than a 2019 talk show.
- Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets
- The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood
HD is already 'low definition' 6 years later, as Netflix plans show.
While 35mm tops out around '12k' (depending on film quality).
And IIRC we already had FullHD Charlie Chaplin remasters by then !
"oppressed", seriously ?!
Is this actually backed by some studies, or is this just the rationalization behind marketing pushing widescreen to be seen at the point of 'progress' ?
For my part, as a new viewer, I'd rather have the original vision even if it's in 4:3, rather than an unknown quality 16:9 one…
And speaking of black and white films, I have seen a recent one named "Cold War" (a love story, actually), and 15 minutes in, had completely forgotten that it was B&W…
- Treme tells a story about New Orleans after Katrina. Instead of focusing on crime, it goes with music, food and death.
- The Deuce's from 70's and 80's New York sex industry and gentrification.
Both of these are quite similar and at the same time different compared to The Wire. I like all of them a lot, but there are different opinions, specifically for Treme which never gathered any large audience.
Anyhow, if you ask this question, you might need to see them both.