I've watched The Wire! The excitable use of exclamation marks is because it's something I thought I would never do. Only because everyone's been raving about it - it kind of put me off. When everyone bangs on about how wonderful something is I worry that particular thing won't live up to the hype, so avoid it.
Plus, every interview you read with anyone at all, their favourite TV is always The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Wire. Again, this rubs me up the wrong way. I like all these shows - The Sopranos is my favourite TV show of all time - however no one wants to be seen to be following the herd do they.
Anyhoo, I bit the bullet and bought the boxed set of The Wire series 1 &2 which were going for a snip on Amazon. And having just been to Baltimore I was intrigued.
So I'm very pleased to report I wasn't disappointed. I won't go into plot details because you're bound to have seen it already and have it as one of your favourite programmes, so you don't need me to tell you, but it's marvellous and to see a story from both sides is unusual but it really works. Some great characters on both the drug dealer and police sides - in fact I don't think there's a bad character in there.
My only criticism would be Dominic West, who plays this hard-drinking macho Irish-American stereoptype Jimmy McNulty. Aside from the fact I find the whole Irish-American thing hugely irritating: to them Ireland is all leprechauns, emerald green fields and penny whistles and the IRA are romantic freedom fighters - real Irish people laugh at them, West is one of those actors I would normally find annoying the way I find James McAvoy and Cal Macininch annoying - actors from the School of Fancying Yourself - but I can overlook that. It's his accent that keeps slipping. Considering he's British though he does a stirling job.
Mrs Five-Centres gave up after 15 minutes because she couldn't understand a word of the dialogue, a comment I've heard quite a few women say, but once the ear becomes attuned it's plain sailing. I have to say though, thank God for the boxed set, as the plot is so intricate if you leave gaps it's takes a while to remember what's been going on.
So on to series 2. Mrs Five-Centres is hard at work in Barcelona, so it's a weekend of The Wire for me.
I'm so glad I did it.
3 comments:
Last Monday we tried episode one, which we'd downloaded from some torrent site. I fell asleep halfway through, so we deleted the episode.
You have to stick with it - it's hard work but well worth the effort.
I watched it because Collins recommended it. I hadn't even heard of it at that point, nor read the exchanges on his Blog.
It's excellent and addictive. Season 2 is a slightly different flavour but equally complelling.
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