Forget buying The Wire box set, the lauded American series is finally getting a terrestrial screening on BBC Two.

Since its launch in 2002, critics have persistently called it the best show on TV, but it has only ever screened on satellite station FX in Britain.

BBC Two will show all five seasons of the dark police drama, spreading the HBO programme across the weekly schedules.

Screening dates and times are yet to be announced, but the series, which once famously featured the word f*** 38 times in one scene, is likely to show after the watershed.

The BBC’s head of series, programme acquisition, Sue Deeks, said: “We are delighted to offer terrestrial viewers the opportunity to watch this ground-breaking series. It's a wonderful chance for everyone to see what the critics have been raving about for so long".

Created by a former journalist, David Simon, and an ex-policeman, Ed Burns, the 60 episodes are set in Baltimore and focus on a group of officers.

But the show eschews typical police drama plots to pick its way through themes of poverty, corruption, gangs, drugs and the education system.

Burns has said it was always his intention to focus on society rather than the drama of policing.

“We were not interested in making a police procedural, even though it was a police procedural. That it was a cop show was a calculated illusion. It seemed as if we could make overt political arguments using fictional storytelling,” he once said.

“At the beginning of season two, we became extremely confident in our ability to tell the story of postindustrial Baltimore and, therefore, post-industrial America.”

The Wire's final episode went to air on FX last September.

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