The Wire, Which cop shows do / did you enjoy?

Which ones and why?

As a kid it was the old Columbo series. The bumbling apologetic cop that always got his man through clever detective work and outwitting the bad guy

I've also been an NYPD Blue fan for quite a while now. It seems the most hard hitting yet realistic cop show that's ever been on the box. I like the way that over the years it didn't go down the path of soap opera more than cop show. The characters weren't made out to be superheroes and each had their own weaknesses as well as strengths. Pretty much followed on from Hill Street Blues which is not surprising since they were both made by the same people

This post has been edited by GangstersInc on Jan 12 2008, 05:24 AM

Columbo, yeah liked that as well. Still do whenever it is on.

I am a big fan of cop show The Wire. If you have a chance see it. It's great. It follows both sides of the law but mostly focusses on the cops and their lives. In Season 1 the story is about the beginning investigation against black drugdealer Avon Barksdale and his gang. They are very organized. Great season, great characters. On the level of The Sopranos.

I only recently learnt that Columbo was made by Steve Boxhxo of NYPD Blue and Hill Street Blues. Very different shows

The Wire is great, can't wait for season two, whenever that is.

Season 2 is great Peter. Great acting, new faces as well as the familiar ones. The same quality as season 1. I got season 2 on DVD a few months ago.

Colombo, The Knock, NYPD Blue, I've just recewntly started getting into the Shield as well. There was also an old British cop/detective show where the main detectives partner was a ghost. I cant rermember the name but watched it quite a lot when I was a kid.

I love the Wire just saw season 2!

David wat ik heel tof vond was de educatiefilm over Rotterdam die Frank Sobotka te zien kreeg...

Yes Holland, it made me feel proud to be Dutch, even if it was a TV show lol, I'm a simple man haha.

"The Shield" is a great cop show in my opinion.
Its about a corrupt cop who is in charge of a small strike team.
The show is not that realistic but realy entertaining. Worth a try

The wire season two is now showing here in Finland, only two episodes left, , but sooner or later season three and four will be here.

Omar is a cool cat

I'm going to watch season 3 tonight!

http://tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=5663

Hehe, I bought S3 as well. Saw four episodes so far, GREAT show!!

I currently enjoy CSI: Miami. I like the Miami city setting and the writing, cast, acting is pretty good. It also features some decent cameos throughout.

Down to 'The Wire'
Dissecting a troubled city's police, politics and press, the HBO series heads toward its conclusion.
By Frazier Moore
Associated Press

NEW YORK -- In last week's season opener of "The Wire," a street-smart youngster is duped into confessing to a murder the detectives know he committed, but can't prove. They attach him to a "lie detector," which is in fact a copy machine. It spits out a pre-loaded sheet of paper that says "FALSE" an instant after the kid has denied the crime. Seeing this, he falls apart and spills everything.

Detective "Bunk" Moreland, savoring his triumph, pronounces a sweeping assessment of humanity: "The bigger the lie," he chuckles, "the more they believe." And with that, viewers were alerted to the theme that will carry "The Wire" through its fifth and final season: escalating lies and misplaced faith in Baltimore.

"The Wire" is a series that has been hailed with almost tiresome consistency as TV's best drama by anyone who watches it, and -- no lie -- this season is the best yet. (The second of the 10-episode run premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO.)

It has always been a study of intertwined and often clashing institutions in a troubled town: the police, the politicians, the labor force, the failing schools, the drug gangs in Baltimore's squalid projects (the series title refers to surveillance by the narcs).

It's a world where, too often, people focus on their narrow self-interest, where doing the right thing is no path to success.

No wonder in this system, lies become the currency with which most business is transacted.

But this season the dilemma is worse than ever. The city is in economic crisis, with budget cutbacks crippling an angry and demoralized police department. Police vehicles aren't being serviced and cops aren't paid their overtime.

"How are we ever gonna pay the bar tab?" grumbles Detective Jimmy McNulty (played by Dominic West) as he orders another round.

"We could always knock off a liquor store," says his bar-mate Bunk (Wendell Pierce).

"The Wire" is a drama crisscrossed by numerous story lines and a crowd of powerfully drawn characters (24 actors are listed in the opening credits). But McNulty is at its core, particularly this season. His roguish, arch indifference masks a righteous streak in full force now.

For a year, he was part of an investigation into the murders of 22 vagrants whose bodies were found abandoned in city housing. It's a serial crime that points back to one of the city's most notorious drug kingpins. But now the probe has been shut down due to budget cuts. McNulty is beside himself over the wasted effort, and the likelihood that those killings might go unavenged.

But things are tough all over. This season, an institution of the media is feeling the pinch. The Sun, Baltimore's foremost newspaper, would seem poised to be an invaluable beacon. But as depicted on "The Wire," it, too, is compromised by economic woes.

Talk at the paper dwells on looming cutbacks, layoffs and buyouts. Under new conglomerate ownership, the mandate has become: do more with less.

"Someday, I wanta find out what's it feels like to work for a real newspaper," cracks one of the reporters, knowing full well that, whatever a "real" newspaper is, it's an endangered species all over.

"The Wire" was created by David Simon, a former police reporter for The Sun who clearly loves the newspaper tradition, but hates the growing trend of papers as commodities. In a media culture where public service is forgotten, mischief routinely goes unchecked. Soon, a big lie will take hold and take over, undetected, right there in the newsroom.

Meanwhile, McNulty devises a lie of his own -- a scheme to kick-start the "rowhouse murders" investigation. However well-intentioned, he is playing a dangerous game, even as he justifies it as a logical response to the misplaced priorities of the powers-that-be.

"Wonder what it feels like to work in a real (expletive) police department," he says bitterly.

Masterminded by a cop and a reporter, here are two deceptions far removed from one another. But each will feed on and inflame the other. As the season unfolds, a city continues to sabotage itself.

But however bleak, "The Wire" packs an ample measure of bitter humor.

For instance, the drug dealers have their problems, but -- unique among the groups depicted on the series -- limited funds isn't one of them.

"I got TOO much money," says ruthless gangster Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector), who just can't launder his cash fast enough.

"Proposition Joe" Stewart (Robert F. Chew) understands: "Ain't enough mattresses, is there now?" he chuckles.

Devotees of "The Wire" know how engrossing, rich and downright addictive it can be. The rest of the TV audience, after letting the series slide by unacknowledged for four seasons, needs to know it's not too late to get on board.

The rewards from the writing, the actors and the potent story line are almost beyond measure. But one fleeting example from the first episode will suffice.

Drunk in the bar, McNulty remembers he needs to call a woman with a lie about what he's up to. He lopes to the pay phone, fishing for coins in his pocket, where he finds his cell phone. What's this? he wonders for an instant. Then, with boozy recognition, he smiles to himself and uses the cell to make his call.

On "The Wire," old habits die hard.

David Simon Interview
http://www.rte.ie/arts/2008/0128/simond.html

SPOILERS BELOW

Television Review | 'The Wire'
So Many Characters, Yet So Little Resolution

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: March 10, 2008
After all these years, all those dead bodies and so many criminal contortions of the law, the wiretap in “The Wire” didn’t bring the bad guys to justice.

Perfect.

Technology and good intentions couldn’t win out in Sunday night’s finale of “The Wire.” The best and most dyspeptic police drama on television would never conclude with a triumph of good over evil. Victories were few, and Pyrrhic.

Truth flickered here and there, but never really came to light. Some people received their comeuppance, but most didn’t. Police work faltered and recouped — a tattered, tainted form of justice was meted out, sort of. Some people were killed or worse. (Alma, an honest reporter at The Baltimore Sun, was exiled to the Carroll County bureau.) A few deserving people came out ahead, or at least even, but nothing really changed: the drug trade thrives and the system in Baltimore drifts on, corrupt and self-sustaining, held together by convenience and a lie too big to bring down.

David Simon did not end his series the way “The Sopranos” came to a close, in a frozen tableau of ambiguity. “The Wire” went out the way it came in five seasons ago, not so much tying up loose ends, though it did, as meticulously proving that there is no end. For every major character who died or moved on, a new incarnation sprang up. And the most poignant was probably Michael, the young protégé of Marlo, the drug kingpin. The boy killed as he was told, but he questioned the logic and the fairness of each hit. When he realized he was the next target, Michael turned not into the next Marlo, but the spitting image of his boss’s nemesis, Omar, a hunted man turned rogue hunter, preying on drug dealers with a shotgun under his coat.

Which doesn’t mean there wasn’t a happy ending or two. Thanks to the same illegal wiretap that first got him into trouble, Marlo walked, but it turned out he didn’t have far to go. Throughout this season and last it was never quite clear whether Marlo — the most enigmatic of drug dealers — was the true heir to Stringer Bell, the dealer turned businessman, or to Avon Barksdale, the dealer who couldn’t leave the streets.

In the finale Marlo walked out of a meeting of real estate developers and found himself back on a corner, confronted by minor hoodlums, no longer really welcome even there. And that was a vindication for Omar, whose Ahab-sized obsession to punish Marlo rose from the grave: Omar died goading Marlo to come back down to the street, and Marlo finally did, only to be taunted by corner boys loyal to Omar’s legacy.

“The Wire” was always a tale of symmetry and disparity. In each season the unfairness and corruption of the streets was mirrored in a different layer of society — the police, the port, City Hall, the schools and the media. All along, individuals who tried to live up to their personal responsibilities were crushed by a vast, entangled system jerry-built to duck accountability.

Detective Jimmy McNulty created the hoax to make the collar, and it cost him his job only because he felt compelled to come clean. In the final episode his successor was anointed in a scene that pointedly echoed the first episode of the first season. Then a newcomer to the homicide squad, McNulty revealed his insubordinate streak by complaining to Judge Daniel Phelan about murky doings in the police department. On Sunday night viewers watched young Detective Leander Sydnor complain to the same judge about the murky doings he witnessed in the department, and the detective didn’t even see the half of it.

Even the smartest, most truth-seeking characters never fathomed the full picture. Gus, the clear-eyed, honorable city editor, couldn’t steer his self-deluded bosses at The Baltimore Sun away from a bum story, one that was mostly made up by Scott Templeton, the rat reporter. Gus was the first to suspect that Scott fabricated quotations and facts, but even Gus never guessed that the entire serial-killer story was a hoax, invented by McNulty to force City Hall to override budget cuts and provide the cars and man-hours that he and Detective Lester Freamon, the detective in love with his wiretap, needed to get Marlo.

“Maybe you win a Pulitzer with this stuff,” Gus warns his boss, “and maybe you have to give it back.” But the odds were stacked in management’s favor. Corruption within the newsroom was entwined with the scams and lies of City Hall and the police department. As Norman, the mayor’s cynical adviser, put it, “everybody is getting what they need behind some make-believe.”

Skip to next paragraph
Related
The Media Equation: Ex-Newsman Laments a Dying Craft (January 21, 2008)
Bittersweet Work of Wrapping ‘Wire’ (January 4, 2008)
Television: No Happy Ending in Dickensian Baltimore (January 6, 2008)
Whacked! Another HBO Main Player Meets His End (December 13, 2004)
The Television Show That Thinks It's a Novel (September 19, 2004) Readers' Comments
"This wonderful series is like a Miles Davis solo. Dark, sad, angry and beautiful."
Gilbert, Austin
Read Full Comment »
There were so many characters, all richly drawn, and none of them got the last laugh, not even Norman, who saw the dark humor in everything. When the mayor and his men learn that the serial-killer story they pumped up for political gain was invented by their own detectives, they were aghast and ashen. Norman was tickled. “It has a certain charm to it,” he said. “They manufactured an issue to get paid, and we manufactured an issue to get you elected governor.” Norman added that he almost wished he was still a reporter at the newspaper so that he could write an exposé of the mess; little did he know that The Baltimore Sun propped up the lie.

Every happy ending came with a sad coda: Bubbles, the former addict and pariah, was at long last invited up the basement stairs to share a family meal in his sister’s dining room. But, of course, young, lost Duquan took his place on the street, injecting the same drugs it took Bubbles much of his life to overcome.

“The Wire” ended at just the right time: too soon. And it’s not that Mr. Simon’s series was the only intelligent drama on television. The difference is that most smart shows try to dazzle viewers with what they don’t know: “House” on Fox throws out the rarest diseases and most far-fetched diagnostic tools to update Sherlock Holmes and “Numb3rs” on CBS twists every crime to fit an advanced mathematical formula.

“The Wire” worked with primary sources that anybody could grasp if they looked closely out the window on the train from New York to Washington. It’s the same view of Baltimore — abandoned row houses, gutted factories and bullet-pocked store fronts — that McNulty takes in when he parks his car and looks down at the city from afar.

“It is what it is,” is what McNulty and others would say to end a conversation. “The Wire” was what it was, and that was a lot.

That'd be Randall and Hopkirk (deceased)

Next week i'm gonna watch the final season of the greatest tv series ever!

To David: onbegrijpelijk dat ze the wire niet in Nederland uitzenden.

You will not de disappointed Hollander! A great season in my opinion

What I find even more surprising is that The Wire has not won a single Emmy award How is this possible? The stories in The Wire go much deeper than The Sopranos. I have to admit that The Wire even has much more memorable characters (I know, blasphemy but really LOL)

Could not agree more. When Sopranos is good, it is the best. But the episodes of The Wire are always good, and that you cannot say about Sopranos.

From Times Online
July 13, 2009

'Real gun battle' at party held by Wire actor Jamie Hector

A baby shower hosted by the most violent, and coldblooded gangster in The Wire ended in a real and deadly gun battle in New York yesterday.

Jamie Hector, who plays callous Marlo Stanfield in the Baltimore cop drama, was holding the party to celebrate his wife’s pregnancy when a gate-crasher apparently exchanged almost 50 bullets with guests.

Police said that one man was killed and two more injured by the assailant, who allegedly followed one of the survivors to the hospital and fired more shots at him.

"What a gun battle," a police source told the New York Daily News. "They have been watching too much TV."

Hector, 33, who portrayed the most fearsome of the drug lords in The Wire, also starred in Heroes and provided one of the voices in the violent computer game Grand Theft Auto. The Stanfield character was renowned for his casual use of deadly force to maintain his drug-dealing business.

It is not clear whether the actor was still at the gathering in Brooklyn shortly after 1am when it was apparently interrupted by a storm of bullets.

Police and paramedics arrived at East 93rd Street in East Flatbush at about 1.20am, where they found evidence of a running gun battle with at least 46 shell casings strewn across half a block. Two guns, a .40-calibre Glock and a .45-calibre Smith & Wesson, were discovered but no suspects were arrested.

It is thought that Linton Williams, 17, of Brooklyn, died at the scene. While Andrew Filson, 32, was injured. He was reportedly taken in a car to Downstate Medical Centre where a second vehicle approached and another round of gun-shots were fired. He was in a critical condition yesterday.

Walter Parker, 22, was also thought to have been shot in the leg outside the party. He was taken to Brookdale University Hospital in an ambulance.

Lisa Bruce, 35, who lives near by said that she was watching a film at home when she heard gunshots "exploding like firecrackers". She looked out of her window and saw one of the victims. "He was shouting, trying to tell somebody that he needed help," she told the Daily News.

"Then the ambulance came, and the man limped out of the bushes and said, 'I'm shot, I'm shot,' and pointed to his leg. Then they took him away."

The Wire's Felicia 'Snoop' Pearson in guilty drugs plea
BBC News, August 10, 2011

Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, who played a drug-gang killer in the hit TV show The Wire, has pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute heroin in Baltimore.

The 31-year-old actor, who shares her nickname with her character from the show, received a seven-year suspended sentence with credit for time served.

Pearson was a real-life drug dealer when she was picked by producers of The Wire for the role.

She told reporters she is now moving to LA to act - and stay out of trouble.

"While I'm delighted to see you here, I don't want to see you again," Baltimore Circuit Judge Lawrence P Fletcher-Hill told Pearson, according to the Baltimore Sun.

The judge accepted the guilty plea on Monday, a day before Pearson's trial was set to begin.

According to charges read aloud in court, Pearson conspired with two others who bought heroin in bulk from New York to distribute in Baltimore, allowing them to use her apartment to keep drugs and money.

She was one of 64 people charged in March as part of the case.

The actress, who was caught on a wiretap in a case that echoed gritty drug-trafficking drama The Wire, also allegedly occasionally sold heroin herself.

Pearson could be sent back to conclude her seven-year sentence should she violate probation over the next three years.

Foster care

Outside the courtroom, attorney Benjamin Sutley said the plea would allow Pearson to continue her acting career, rather than spending time with the charges hanging over her.

"I can't say she would have been found not guilty," Mr Sutley said. But Pearson interrupted, saying "I would have been found not guilty."

Pearson was born to crack-addicted parents and went into the foster-care system before being adopted by an elderly couple.

In her autobiography, she describes dealing drugs at 12, and was convicted of second-degree murder when she was 14.

Her life was turned around when she landed a role in The Wire after meeting Michael K Williams, who played Omar on the show - but she "fell back in [with] people who essentially raised her" after the series ended in 2008, Mr Sutley was quoted as saying in court.

He told the judge she had learned a "valuable lesson".

Outside the courtroom, Pearson said she had two movie contracts in the works and had a plan to stay out of trouble in future.

"I'm moving to LA," she said, according to the Baltimore Sun.

"I'm out of here, man."