Watch the opening
scene and credits for the first episode of The Wire
BBC Two has announced that it will finally show the cult American television
series The Wire. The news will rob British devotees who followed it on FX or
DVD of their air of superiority at having survived the most challenging and
rewarding experience in television history. But BBC viewers, who will soon
be able watch all 60 episodes shown nightly across the week, should not be
put off by the cult's talk of difficulty and pleasure deferred. The Times
has found a friendly owner of a Wire box set to help Wire virgins to stop
worrying and enjoy the show from episode one. They just have to bear a few
things in mind...
Sceptical BBC Two viewer, sulking at being invited late to the party: What
is The Wire?
Smug box set owner: If it isn't the best television drama serial yet
made - and it may be - it is certainly the most grown-up. Shown on America's
subscription-only HBO channel between 2002 and 2008, it dramatised the
crises that have befallen the working class in the East Coast city of
Baltimore in the past decade. Its first series was ostensibly a police
procedural drama but it subsequently broadened into a portrait of the city's
uneconomic docks, its corrupt local government, its failing schools and,
finally, in its fifth series, the inadequacy of the newspaper that should
have been reporting all this, the Baltimore Sun. Permeating all levels is
the cancer of the city's illegal drug culture.
It doesn't exactly sound like fun.
You'd be surprised. I hardly watch an episode that doesn't at some point make
me laugh out loud. As you will see from the off, the cops and the drug
barons share a cynicism about the world that is as funny as it is bleak.
I asked what the wire was.
Ah, “the wire” is the wire tap that is set up by the cops in series one to
catch a gang of drug dealers responsible for some dozen murders a year on
Baltimore's poor West Side. Frankly, the wire tap is not the most important
thing, and in later series it is irrelevant, but using it as the title
perhaps speaks to the series' prevailing mood. Most characters are both
permanently “wired”, as in a state of elevated tension, and performing a
high-wire act: one slip could get them killed, fired or divorced.
Funny, tense, grown-up - sounds like The Sopranos.
Comparisons are odious. The Sopranos was painted with broader strokes than The
Wire. Its characters were larger than life; The Wire's are so lifelike that
sometimes it doesn't look like acting at all.
So no break-out great characters?
Oh, but there are, it is just that you don't notice them at first. It is like
going to a new job: everyone seems like everyone else at first but soon you
revel in their differences. It won't take you long to appreciate the various
levels of cynicism, idealism and corruption within the ranks of the police.
Your way in is Jimmy McNulty, an Irish-American detective. He has a drink
problem, his adultery has bust up his marriage and he has scant respect for
anyone - and he is about the best “police” (note the lack of a definite
article; it's not used in Baltimore) there is. Remarkably, he is played by
an English actor, the Eton-educated Dominic West (Oliver Cromwell in The
Devil's Whore on Channel 4).
Soon, however, the black actors eclipse even him. No two gangsters are alike.
Take Avon Barksdale, the leader of the drug gang, and his number two,
Stringer Bell (also played by an Englishman, Idris Elba). At first the
characters seem interchangeable but you soon see that Avon is the ruthless,
intuitive CEO to whom nothing matters more than his reputation on the street
and the bottom line. Think of Alan Sugar. Bell, on the other hand, perches
his reading glasses on the end of his nose like a scholar and analyses the
drug market. He is as much a wannabe economist as a gang leader. Think of
Nick Hewer on The Apprentice. And then there is Omar, the freelance
assassin, who is gay and never swears, and Bubbles, a hopeless but
well-meaning heroin addict whose idea of taking the initiative is to
photocopy bank notes and stain them with coffee to make them look real. Too
good to be true? I asked Ed Burns, one of the main Wire writers and a former
Baltimore cop, if he knew a real Bubbles or a real Omar. “Many Bubbles, many
Omars,” he said.
Is Burns the reason people say it is authentic?
One of them. David Simon is the programme's actual creator and he was a crime
correspondent on the Baltimore Sun who got to know the streets, and police
such as Burns, very well. But the show is also filmed on location rather
than in Hollywood. Minor roles are taken by former gang members and
policemen. Adding to the realism is the unapologetic use of police jargon
and street slang. In the first episode alone “DOB”, “Decomp”, “DNRs”, and
“Title Three” are bandied about by the police without explanation. The gangs
talk about “rolling bones”, “stashes”, “re-upping”, “packages”, “fading a
few shooters”...
So is it really a docudrama, journalism by other means?
Its makers are slightly ambivalent about this. The first series is clearly
based on one of Burns's old cases, which is why, rather mystifyingly for a
story set after 9/11, everyone still uses pagers rather than mobile phones.
Simon told me: “It's rooted in my history as a journalist. It's rooted in Ed
Burns's DNA as a cop and teacher, and it's rooted in the social realism of
the novelists we have working for us. The impulse is the same - to be
accurate with the world - but I have too much respect for what journalism
was, or used to be, in this country to suggest that fiction is journalism.”
But he also said he was able to be more “honest” in The Wire than he was in
his journalism.
There is no doubt Simon and Burns have a political agenda. Burns is
particularly angry at the “war on drugs”. “You don't declare war on an
ideology, you declare war on people,” he said. “On poverty, we war on the
poor. In the educational system it's the children. On drugs, the drug
addicts.” But the message is there only if you want to take it. What strikes
me is how well crafted The Wire is as a piece of art as well as reportage.
There is a famous scene in episode three in which Avon's nephew comes across
a couple of youngsters from the projects playing checkers with chess pieces.
Dee explains that they should learn chess and tutors them with gangland
analogies. The king is the drug kingpin who can move in any direction but
“ain't got no hustle” and has to rely on his team to protect him. The castle
is like the “stash house”, frequently moving. And while Dee explains chess
to them, he is explaining the mechanics of the drug trade to us.
Is there any short cut to mastering all this jargon?
The Wall Street Journal published an article headed “Talk the talk” a couple
of years ago providing a glossary of some of the most-used terms. A “burner”
for example is a pre-paid mobile phone. But it is not easy. The newspaper
admits that “package” has several meanings, including a package of heroin or
cocaine - or Aids. The point is that you are not meant to understand it all.
Like living in a foreign country, you pick the language up by immersing
yourself in it.
Is this why people say that The Wire is difficult to follow?
Partly. There is also a huge number of characters, and Burns and Simon pride
themselves on not making their storytelling obvious. They think that
audiences get more out of a narrative if they have to pay attention to
understand what is going on. Burns told me: “You probably won't get it all.
You might not understand the language. It's our job by hinting along the way
that this is where this character's going, this is why this character's
acting that way. We don't have a character come out and say: ‘I'm
extraordinarily angry... I want to f*** someone up'.”
And there is another problem...
What?
Sometimes it is hard to hear what's said because the accents are so strong.
You know, I'm not sure if I can be bothered...
But you must. And there is a solution: turn on the subtitles. Americans do it
all the time. No shame, no stigma (well not for us in Britain). And the
plotting does become clearer. Season two, set in the port, is a doddle. But
if you make it that far, you won't be calling it a chore. You'll find even
24 hours too long to wait for the next episode. I promise you - much as I've
enjoyed being a member - The Wire is too good to remain a cult.
The Wire begins on Monday, March 30, on BBC Two
