The Wire is a series on the American City understood as a concept or as the Absolute Whole. It is also a series that tries to confront us with the problems posed by the police, politics, the press or the school. Four different backgrounds of course but similar because they are interconnected. In this way, it is also the contemporary family - or at least a certain form of it - which is exposed with its ups and downs. The Wire is thought out and lived as a coherent whole: if you are shown season 3 when you have not seen the second or the first, do not start! If you can watch "The Big Bang Theory" each episode individually by varying the seasons, nothing like it in The Wire. The scriptwriters have not minced the work of the viewer: a fact mentioned, a line of dialogue, a seemingly innocuous gesture, etc., can each anticipate and/or recall another sequence from the series. In addition, these anticipations and reminders are created between the characters in order to signify that the different environments shown on the screen form a single whole. The Wire is therefore a series with a reinforced concrete scenario even if it is not free from bias. The Wire must therefore be considered as a novel whose episodes are so many chapters that must bring us to the end.
Paradoxically, his immense qualities did not allow the series to be a success with the public at the time of the broadcast. The cast, made up of 85%-90% African-Americans, is probably not for nothing, but does not explain everything. If I tell you that season 2 was the most followed when it is the one where the cast is mainly white, does that surprise you? The racial question is, as we unfortunately saw again during the summer of 2014, very present in the United States. Perhaps what really kept The Wire from becoming an Emmy regular like The Sopranos were was his very constructed side. Certain sequences or lines of dialogue can only make sense after several viewings of the same episode. At this rate, the show's writers and cast didn't expect to take home many accolades. It wouldn't be surprising if they even took some pride in it...
