The Wire is the best TV show ever and here's why. Set in the ailing industrial seaport of Baltimore, Maryland, it's a cop show that isn't.

Although centred around criminal activity - chiefly drug-dealing and related gang murder, but also white-collar crime - it avoids the crime-solving clichés and gives equal emphasis to those on both sides of the law. At every step, The Wire takes pains to contextualise crime and police work socially and politically. UK converts are already suffering withdrawal as the fifth and final season comes to an end on the cable channel FX. (It has never been bought by a terrestrial channel - one of British television's greatest own goals and has become a must-have DVD box set). For newcomers, the five seasons are themed, respectively, around drugs, the docks, politics, education and the media, but all intermesh to create a living, breathing whole.

Ignored by all the major TV awards juries, The Wire still feels like a secret club. It is most readily compared to The Sopranos - the gangster saga also produced by the US subscription channel HBO, where there are less ad-revenue-led worries about adult themes and profanity. If The Sopranos played out like an opera, The Wire is better described as a “visual novel”, to quote its creator, David Simon. Simon has either written, co-written or storylined all 60 episodes since its debut in 2002, alongside a hard-boiled writing staff comprising mostly crime novelists. This accounts for the unusual writing, which feels utterly unlike standard TV drama: conversational, colloquial, off-the-cuff, humorous, devoid of clumsy exposition or crude signposting. Stories unfold not in hour-long chunks, but across entire series. It's counterproductive to just “dip in”. And don't expect weekly resolutions. These are not episodes, but chapters.

Shot on location, the acting is naturalistic, with unfamiliar faces throughout, many of them Baltimore natives and some reformed hoodlums. The cast list is vast, with very few appearing in every episode, outside the boozy Det Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), fastidious Det Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters), dedicated Det Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) and drugs kingpins Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris), Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector) and Omar Little (Michael K Williams), as well as recovering addict Bubbles (Andre Royo), the show's quiet linking thread. Be warned: it takes some effort to get into the rhythm of the street language - your initial wish will be for subtitles, but persevere. It's worth it. This is not a TV series; it's a way of life.

Andrew Collins is film editor of Radio Times

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The Sunday Times 100 best holiday reads
• What will we be reading this summer: the booksellers predict
• Literary festivals: a survivor’s guide