Wire, The - Season 4 Reviews

[Highly rated reviewer]

Every bit as good as you've heard

When The Guardian's Charlie Brooker goes on and on about The Wire as being the best American TV show of the last twenty years, he can get a bit repetitive. You'd also be entitled to wonder why, if The Wire is such an amazing piece of work, it only gets a UK airing on the obscure FX Channel rather than one of the big mainstream stations. But your reservations would be totally unjustified. The Wire is every bit as good as you've been told and better. Sure, it'll take you three episodes before you have a clue what is going on, but the investment pays dividends.

I can't remember a drama serial from either side of the Atlantic with such depth and emotional range and that delivers trenchant social comment along with a narrative tempo that suffers not one jot from a huge cast of characters and a complex plotline. Unsentimental, brave and moving - I guarantee you will not regret it, but start with season one and work your way through otherwise you really won't have a clue what's going on! Roll on season five!

The most tedious show ever

I'm sick of HBO. Their solution to every show is to throw in as much swearing, sex and gratuitous nudity and hope that between the bloodshed and crass dialogue some sort of plot will emerge. It worked in Deadwood because it had some of the finest actors alive working it but failed with Rome because after a while you didn't care who lived or died. Same too for The Wire which started off as a long-winded but entertaining show and rapidly tried to 'keep it real' by adding more 'gangster' dialogue and shootings. The difference between this and something like Oz is that while both have some of the nastiest specimens of humanity on display the scipt and acting in Oz actually makes you understand them a bit better and it says a lot about the actor if you come to hate or respect their character.

Not for the Wire. The actors are as bad as the script which has nothing to recommend itself and after an hour you couldn't care less who lives, who dies and what happens. The first season had the incredible Idris Elba in for a good amount of time but wiith his departure and that of a few other's we've been left with the wooden Dominic West and the other equally lifeless cast members. Why anyone would watch this in a world that has delights such as Oz, Hill Street Blues, West Wing or Boomtown is beyond me.

[Highly rated reviewer]

THE BEST TV EVER

Plain and simple. This is the best TV show ever made. Better than the Sopranos (I mean, I love the Sopranos, but the conceit of a mob boss going to see a psychiatrist becomes the central hook for the whole show? fuggeddaboudit!), better than Twin Peaks (I, once again, loved Twin Peaks and wished it would never end, even when it became so dense and lost its way without David Lynch's involvement), and has now nudged out my previous all-time-favorite show, Homicide: Life on the Streets.

I love the complexity of the characters and the fact that no one, absolutely no one, is a totally sympathetic character, they are all flawed, unlikeable and likeable in their own ways. I love the pace of the dialogue and the ear for slang, whether its the slang of drug dealers in the projects, lawyers in the courtroom, politicians, real estate developers, cops, longshoremen or news reporters. I love the fact that it takes place in Baltimore which is NOT New York or LA or Chicago or Miami or Vegas, but just plain, old, boring, depressed, who-the-hell-actually-lives-there-anyway Baltimore. I love the fact that each new series examines a different segment of society and still somehow manages to bring in some (or most, if not all) of the characters from the previous series and show you how it all fits into a bigger picture.

I love this show so much that I bought the first 2 series on DVD so that I could go around and find people who have never seen the show and lend them the series so that they could get hooked and keep spreading the fever.

Absolute Class

I urge you to see this series. Start from the beginning, its a fantastic journey. HBO just seem to go from strength to strength. I love the Sopranos and Deadwood - will there be another series. i almost felt guilty when I realised that I like The Wire just as much. The writing, characterisations and acting are without compare. At times the accents are a bit difficult to understand - but that's why you have rewind. I urge you again to put it in your priority rentals from series one to four.

[Highly rated reviewer]

worst wire yet

I really enjoyed the first 3 seasons but the death of a key character - you know who I mean if you are a wire junky has been replaced with substandard characters. The new gangsters and kids in this series are boring obnoxious. I tried but I just don't get the same buzz. Jumping ship. Maybe they should have ended it last season.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Brilliant.

The Wire is up there with The Soprano's, and Shield,incredibly well written and produced,television at it's finest.It doesn't get any better than this.

[Highly rated reviewer]

outstanding.

Outstanding television. Some of the old faces are still around some have gone (I won't give names just in case you're reading this before you've finished series three.)

Bubbles can still break your heart or make you whoop for joy at a little triumph.

This series spends alot of time with the next generation the 'younguns' and God that can make for some hard viewing but the young cast are fantastic, having to switch from hard faced for the street to vulnerable when it looks like they might be going to baby lock up.

I can not praise this show enough. There simply has never been anything like it before.

Believe all the five star reviews.

A friendly warning. Be carefull when you go to the official web sight for the show. I was looking up an actor to see what else I might have seen him in and ended up finding out a plot twist I didn't want to know.

Customer Review

Though it lacks the muscle-tightening thriller elements of previous serieses, Season Four is The Wire at the height of its powers. Only a show with The Wire's track record would have the confidence and ambition to attempt a commentary on both the education and political systems in Baltimore, and then use this merely as a backdrop for the main event: a cracking human interest story of boys-to-men, heart-rending and inspiring by turns.

There is a bit of "Stand by Me" and - even further back - "Lord of the Flies" in the teenagers' unfolding drama, but this is a much harsher picture of progression to adulthood: poignant, pitiless and (often literally) pitch-black. The characters Randy, Dukie, Namond and Michael are introduced to us in the first scene, and their fates give the series its dramatic undertow.

Old favourites provide continuity. Proposition Joe, more immobile, sweatier, still holding his own though - just. Marlo Stanfield, street kingpin, man of few words, ruling with a chilling stillness. And - of course - Omar Little, a Robin Hood for the 'hood, whose epigrammatic utterances have more than a touch of Oscar Wilde.

In the "Special Features" part of the DVD, writer/creator David Simon claims the Wire is about "sociology and economics, not good and evil". Do leave off Dave; The Wire is ALL about good v. evil, and its dramatic realisation of that eternal conflict is what makes it so watchable and compelling.

[Highly rated reviewer]

HEADING DOWNHILL!

Very disjointed series following the starburst of central characters into their own seperate storylines. The quality that was there in the first series has now become very diluted. I soon started fast-forwarding scenes from the schoolroom story lines. Sweet gig for West though. He still gets star billing despite only popping up in the corener every couple of episodes to remind us he's still alive!

[Highly rated reviewer]

GRIPPING

I HAVE WATCH ALL OF THE SEASONS AND THEY GET BETTER AND BETTER NEVER HEARD OFF THE WIRE UNTILL I JOINED THIS SITE I HAVE SEASON 5 NOW ON ORDER CAN'T WAIT