The Wire in HD (2014)

This is funny btw, but I highly value most of David Simon's series, and I've watched Treme, Generation Kill and The Deuce many times over. I didn't really like any of these series on my first watch, but something pulled me back for rewatch. I'm glad it did. I think I've grown as a person while going through the stories they tell; all these series are now my absolute all-time favorite television.

One of the funniest things I have ever heard was a radio interview with Richard Price - one of the writers of The Wire.

He describes how he drove one of the actual Baltimore gang members, in his car - I think from Baltimore to Philly - and while they were driving, they were listening to NPR, and A Prairie Home Companion came on the radio ...

... and this gang member from Baltimore was flabbergasted and wanted to know just What. The. Fuck. this was on the radio ...

It definitely takes place in Baltimore, and is based upon experiences of David Simon while a newspaper reporter in Baltimore, but it definitely is about police and various types of crime (most often drug related). It is also about education, the news industry, and city government policies and bureaucracy. Having grown up in Philly I can assure you it could easily have been set in that location with no major changes to the story. In this respect, Baltimore is just a stand in for East Coast.

I usually recommend people make it through season 2 before deciding they're in it for the long haul (bearing in mind that 2 seasons is already quite a haul, especially for such a dense show). It's my experience that people get turned off by the jump from the expected gangsters-and-cops to the more "boring" Longshore men storyline (though like many, I appreciated season 2 a lot more in retrospect).

Much like GOT, either it grabs you enough to continue in the first few episodes or it doesn't. It's not like it changes the speed of exposition and character development. Unlike GOT it doesn't get worse with time.

Watching it with subtitles is good advice.

As a non-native English speaker, I can confirm that the dialog was basically impenetrable for me without subtitles. Even with subtitles, it took 4-5 episodes before I could confidently claim to be understanding everything the characters were saying. Definitely a revelation for me that this kind of variation exists among English speakers in the same city/country.

It's a bit of a thing here. DC and Baltimore actors will take jobs in New York to get NYC credits on their resumes. They'll sometimes get post office boxes in NYC just so that casting directors won't write them off, then drive up for the actual audition. Only then will they find it possible to get cast for major projects being filmed in the city where they live.

The locals will get background work, hoping to be noticed, and occasionally it even happens.

It's not that there's resentment to The Wire or Homicide, which really kick-started the local television industry. But there's a bitter irony of playing second-fiddle (and third-fiddle) to so many out of towners in a city with a thriving industry and a lot of local talent.

Acting is, of course, a crummy line of work to be in regardless. It's not like your Broadway dreams come true just by moving up I-95.

It was jarring enough that I stopped watching it as a result, might be time to try again (I was on Season 3), it was a great show from what I saw up to that point.

I'm currently watching the Wire because I was convinced by another HN comment last week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25527957

This is a persistent myth. They were all professional actors.

To have the opportunity to see a high-fidelity but true-to-composition version would really pique my interest. I guess managing and serving two different versions probably isn’t straightforward, but I believe Disney already does it with The Simpsons, so perhaps one day there will be a ‘remastered’ original cut.

As usual it probably comes down to cost and money - as Simon writes, it was hard enough to get the edit right and on time for the 16:9 version, and who knows how much of that effort would have to be duplicated for 4:3, even with the original as a guide. Still, it seems a missed opportunity.

You can make an approximation of one yourself. In VLC in the menu you can select

Video > Crop > 4:3

I just compared the pilot scene mentioned in the article with Wee Bey, D and the neon signs, and the result is not much different except for the image fidelity.

- Treme tells a story about New Orleans after Katrina. Instead of focusing on crime, it goes with music, food and death.

- The Deuce's from 70's and 80's New York sex industry and gentrification.

Both of these are quite similar and at the same time different compared to The Wire. I like all of them a lot, but there are different opinions, specifically for Treme which never gathered any large audience.

Anyhow, if you ask this question, you might need to see them both.

That's why IMO significant spoilers should be marked indefinitely. Sure it's an old show, but tons of people were too young to have watched it at the time. They deserve a fighting chance at seeing it unspoiled.

There may be exceptions to this rule for spoilers that are a core part of culture (say, parental relationships in the Star Wars universe), but it's free to mark spoilers as such. People can feel free to ignore such warnings if they'd like.

3 is a lot of people's favorite season and I understand why. The show is just very, very good.