The Wire...

[BeholderBurger]

The Wire is one of my favourites. I did have to persevere for the first half of the first series until it really kicks off. The characters are brilliant. Bubbles is ace.

 

[lin_fusan]

I see the Wire as one big character study, not just of the individuals, but of the character of Baltimore itself. There's a plot, but it's stretched out over the whole season, so the climaxes are tamped down a little, and they don't really (except for a couple of exceptions) have cliffhanger endings to episodes.

My girlfriend and I are on the beginning of Season 2, and we've been hooked from the beginning!

 

[Pielorinho]

I keep trying to get into it. I have the first series boxed set. But I keep trying to watch the first episode and can't understand a single word anyone says! The accents are so thick it's like watching a German movie or something.

Heh--that's kind of funny. It's not uncommon for me, on watching British movies, to turn on subtitles to deal with difficult accents (especially things like Trainspotting or Breakfast on Pluto). No shame in regarding movies from across the Atlantic as foreign-language flicks!

And yeah, I think the Wire is a work of freakin' art.

Very minor spoiler below:
It has the best bit of expository dialog I've ever encountered. Early in the first season, one flunky in a crime syndicate sees some other flunkies playing checkers using a chess set. He mocks them for this and then explains the rules of chess to them by analogizing each piece to a particular role within the crime syndicate.

His explanation makes sense, and it works as a reasonably-interesting scene and as a way to showcase the three characters involved. However, its real purpose in the narrative is precisely the opposite of the superficial purpose: rather than explaining how chess works by analogizing it to the syndicate, the dialogue really explains to the audience how the syndicate works by analogizing it to chess pieces.

It's brilliant.

 

[Fiery_Dragon]

My favourite show ever.

 

[Derulbaskul]

I keep trying to get into it. I have the first series boxed set. But I keep trying to watch the first episode and can't understand a single word anyone says! The accents are so thick it's like watching a German movie or something.

I had the same problem a few times which watching it so I actually used the subtitles. I normally don't have problems with American accents but I did a few times while watching The Wire.

(I'm Australian and, oddly enough, sometimes struggle to understand New Zealanders despite many non-Aussies thinking the New Zealand accent is similar to an Australia accent [mind you, my accent is not very broad in large part because I have lived in Singapore for 10+ years and I actually like people to understand what I'm saying].)