The Wire
The wire has a specific formula it follows. Introduce all of the necessary information in the first few episodes (which makes those episodes pretty boring & confusing), then the good guys try to do good while the bad guys try to do bad. There are good guys who are criminals and bad guys who are cops! By the end of the season it seems like the good guys might win against all odds & achieve everything they set out to do. But alas, everything falls apart and the good guys are only able to make a small dent. They arrested someone high up in the drug trade but not the kingpin. Or they weren’t able to fix the school systems but one kid got saved from his toxic home life. Rinse and repeat each season while introducing a new Baltimore institution: dock workers, the school system, the press.
I would have watched this play out for as many seasons as they wanted to make. Out of the many many storylines and characters I can hardly think of any I wasn’t invested in. It’s a simple premise but the execution is fantastic. The care to make every single part alive— like all this would be happening regardless of whether there was a TV show about it.
I’ve thought about what the wire has to say about the world. It certainly asks you to sympathize with cops on many occasions. It also portrays the police department as fundamentally flawed— less a few bad apples and more a few good apples whose hands are tied by the broken system. The wire is also pretty pessimistic about systemic reform. Like I said, the good guys never get big wins where they make life better for everyone. The best they can do is help a few people. The final episode is a callback to the first episode, showing how little changed despite the events of the 5 seasons. On the other hand, our heroes are the people who dream big and take on institutions against terrible odds. The fight never stops though they never win. Maybe, then, the message is that striving for change is worthwhile despite how taxing and impossible it sometimes is.
Very good show, not sure who to recommend it to because it does feel very different from most things out there— very slow burn but it doesn’t stop growing on you!