What about Deadwood???

Better.

Anyone who says Deadwood is better, hasn't seen The Wire. I can't understand why The Wire isn't more known. The future is going to regard as one of the top artistic achievements of the 2000s. And wonder about the hype over the other HBO shows(I do think most,including Deadwood, are great though)over it.

Damn straight. It's definitely the best show on TV right now. And if anyone's concerned about jumping in a few seasons late, don't sweat it: barring 24, The Wire has the most self-contained seasons of any drama. You absolutely don't need the backstory.

Fuck all this debating taste. I just want a paid of them gray stone washed 517s kid in the piicture is rickin'.

Holy Shit.

I've seen the Wire several times and it just hasn't moved me. I know a lot of people love it and I can see why, but I barely understand what's happening most of the time, don't know who the characters are (backstory is needed in my opinion) and stopped caring after a few episodes. It's a good show, but it's not that accessible and I think that's why it's not more popular.

Sorry dude, The Wire is boring. I've tried to get into it each and every season and it's just not happening.

From (almost) the same creative team was the series Homicide: Life on the Street. Another excellent exploration of city live in Baltimore. All seven seasons (with the first six actually good) are available on DVD, and at the SPL.

Likewise, there are two excellent non-fiction books, "Homicide: Life on the Killing Streets" and "The Corner" about a year with Balto-city homicide detectives and a year on a drug corner respectively.

Highly reccomended and available at your local library.

Deadwood is great. The Wire is much better. It's no contest.

... and if you think it boring, dude, don't worry. A whole new season of "Two and a Half Men" starts soon. Knock yourself out.

Now, now, let's not get ugly.

I've been with the show since the beginning, and it is killin'!! I can't wait to hopefully see some face time between Omar and Snoop (who might well be my favorite character of season 4, though Dookie(sp?) is holding his own as well).

The Corner is one of the most powerful books I've ever read. Crackheads stealing the copper pipes from the basement of the house while Mom is upstairs cooking dinner, about to get a surprise when she turns the tap on....

Having grown up in Camden, across the bridge from Philly, I gotta say the Wire is like going home again.

It is by far the best show on TV, ever.. Im not taking away anything from Deadwood or the early Sopranos, but the Wire is the best portrait of dying east coast cities ever..

The portrait of cops, politicians and destroyed communities is the best I have yet to see.

Did you guys see the first show? Marlo's enforcers are some cold blooded dudes. Avon did not stand a chance against Marlo.

Whats going to happen when Marlo's enforcers go head to head with Omar Little?

Snoop is one cold blooded FEmale.

So what's the story between the connection between the wire and the corner? same city, many of the same actors (but interestingly playing different characters - actors that play cops on the Wire are junkies on the Corner.), both HBO, Ed Burns involvement...it's as if one (the Corner) is the junkie and very human side of the story and one (the Wire) is law enforcement/political side.

I love the Wire, but I stayed up last night until 3AM watching 5 of 6 parts of the corner (all but the finale, which I'm saving for tonight). That is some real real shit.

I see this one woman on the street for 10 years now. She's a real person to me, cuz I've had a lot of personal interactions with her over the years. Shows like the Corner (and to a lesser extent the Wire) are a good reminder that every single person out there has a story. Unlike the sentiment that I read on SLOG sometimes (Charles M!), these people are not human trash.

Anyway, anyone care to enlighten me on the connection between the 2?

There was a television program made from the book The Corner? I need to get in more.

Charles S. Dutton (rock) made the Corner, and it has already played on BET, but if you want the non edited version you have to rent the DVD or see it when they run it again on HBO.

It’s a very powerful docu-style drama; one of the best Ive seen.

I don’t know man, I don’t see a lot of similarities with the WIRE. I mean, we can say they’re both based in inner-city Baltimore, and some of the actors from the WIRE are in it, but I think the CORNER is a direct look into the lives of junkies, crack heads and their families and the effects of heroin and rock on their world, it is devastating, and I think its powerful because films or tv shows rarely concentrate an entire series on the junkies and crack heads, and this film goes all the way to the bottom, from their struggles with drugs to their infections and their sores to the way dealers treat them like animals, and the pain of their families to the decency of some junkies.

The Wire is more a more complete look, but aside from Bubbles you don’t really get to see the underworld of the addicts as you do in the corner. In a way Bubble is a functional junkie, and the Corner you see the junkies and addicts that Mudede referred to in his post, the ones that are already dead.

The end of the corner is a trip, when Dutton interviews the actual addicts on the corner where everything was filmed.

It's a 6 part miniseries called The Corner...again mostly the same actors as in The Wire. If you have On Demand you can watch them all in one sitting - 6 rather grueling hours of infected injection sites and associated sores and swellings, parents stealing money and stash from kids, detox, shooting galleries, stealing plumbing pipes from under people's housing for a couple bucks at the scrap metal yard, etc. You really feel for and love the characters who do these terrible things to themselves and those they love. Sean Nelson, who plays D'Andre - the youngblood of the cast - is an amazing actor. He deals coke for pocket change, to help support his family (mom's an H junkie too), and because he knows that slipping his dad a few bucks every now and again, gives the dad - they are estranged - a bit of peace - through a needle. It's heartbreaking to see a boy of 14 who gives a parent money for drugs because the child really wants to ease the suffering of their parent.