The Wire Re-Wired

The good guys.

Marlo Stanfield is an up-and-coming drug kingpin and a ruthless killer who is determined to shepard his burgeoning cartel to the top. But you shouldn't be worried if you see him in the future, rather you should be thrilled, because the return of Marlo will herald the fourth season of The Wire on HBO, a fictional account of the underworld in Baltimore, Maryland.

I'm not one for cop dramas, in fact I can't think of one I've ever liked, so consider this when you discover that I think The Wire is the absolute best show on TV. For three years it has received all kinds of praise and acclaim from critics.

After a discussion one morning of how I liked realistic TV shows and how rare those are, Sunday recommended that I check out The Wire, which was about to begin season three. I was instantly hooked. It is one of the most realistic and necessarily complex dramas I've ever seen. The characters are complex, the plot dense, and the problem space impossible. It is truly enthralling and absorbing. Entertainment doesn't get any better than this.

Perhaps it is so good because the series creator, David Simon, was once a newspaper reporter covering the Baltimore crime beat - someone who became intimately familiar with the real world complexities of the issues and people involved. After spending years trying to make sense of it all in the real world, he is uniquely qualified to bring this universe to television.

Despite how good it is, The Wire has not been popular with viewers. It's complexity means it is not mindless entertainment. Sunday and I find ourselved constantly using our ReplayTV to rewind and listen to something again. Subtitles or closed captioning is required to understand some of the characters, mostly because they speak very good ebonics. But even though the viewers haven't been coming in droves, the viewership The Wire does have remains very loyal. For a show that was teetering on the brink of extinction, this is definitely an Aww Yeah moment for us all, ya'll. I won't be writing much about TV shows, but this one is worth giving some net-time to. Seasons one and two are next on my NetFlix queue, and season four will be back in 2006.