This is funny btw, but I highly value most of David Simon's series, and I've watched Treme, Generation Kill and The Deuce many times over. I didn't really like any of these series on my first watch, but something pulled me back for rewatch. I'm glad it did. I think I've grown as a person while going through the stories they tell; all these series are now my absolute all-time favorite television.
I never thought about this. Having grown up in near NYC and Balitmore shortly before The Wire it still seemed like there were things I missed. I can imagine even with subtitles there are some things that aren’t fully understood immediately just with word play.
But it's an interesting show anyway, even without the details.
I'd never really considered this. Grew up in the south-eastern US, with one side of the family from the Northern Neck of Virginia.
Accent was definitely Baltimore, but I never had an issue.
The Chesapeake Bay definitely has a lot of interesting accents on various sides, though: http://aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMapCanada
And I mean, they do have a scene where the cops have to hire a local lady who speaks the slang well to transcribe some of the conversations.
And yet Dominic West/Jimmy McNulty and Idris Elba/Stringer Bell are English and Aidan Gillen/Tommy Carcetti is Irish.
Idris Elba does an excellent job, but it’s a little easier for him since he’s given the most slang and dialect to use. Dominic West sounds American at least, but to people who know it, he doesn’t really capture the ‘Bawlmer’ accent. With respect to accent, Aidan Gillen is not great. It’s not quite “Littlefinger on the Chesapeake Bay”, but he never sounds comfortable in the accent. That it's easily overlooked is a credit to the overall greatness of the show.
Strangely, most of the significant characters in the drug trade are missing a Baltimore accent. I'm not really sure what accent Idris Elba is going for though it sounds vaguely New York City, while Method Man clearly sounds like a New Yorker when his character is from Baltimore. Wood Harris, who played Stringer's partner Avon Barksdale, sounds like he's from Chicago. The only ones speaking in a Baltimore accent are Proposition Joe, Slim Charles, and Snoop Pearson.
To be honest, his accent/affectation in Game of Thrones also always sounded kind of forced and uncomfortable to me. Still love his performance in both shows, though.
One of the funniest things I have ever heard was a radio interview with Richard Price - one of the writers of The Wire.
He describes how he drove one of the actual Baltimore gang members, in his car - I think from Baltimore to Philly - and while they were driving, they were listening to NPR, and A Prairie Home Companion came on the radio ...
... and this gang member from Baltimore was flabbergasted and wanted to know just What. The. Fuck. this was on the radio ...
It definitely takes place in Baltimore, and is based upon experiences of David Simon while a newspaper reporter in Baltimore, but it definitely is about police and various types of crime (most often drug related). It is also about education, the news industry, and city government policies and bureaucracy. Having grown up in Philly I can assure you it could easily have been set in that location with no major changes to the story. In this respect, Baltimore is just a stand in for East Coast.
The Deuce sees the system operating in New York from 70's to the late 80's. Similarities with The Wire and Treme are in that series too regarding institutions, but the focus is on porn and gentrification.
I usually recommend people make it through season 2 before deciding they're in it for the long haul (bearing in mind that 2 seasons is already quite a haul, especially for such a dense show). It's my experience that people get turned off by the jump from the expected gangsters-and-cops to the more "boring" Longshore men storyline (though like many, I appreciated season 2 a lot more in retrospect).
I just finished my third rewatch last night and I honestly like season 2 more each time I watch it. It might be my second favorite season after season 4.
"Blegh. Unions. Politics. Yawn."
But it makes sense, right? Real corruption and crime isn't always about drugs and shotguns.
I think the reaction is just that it's unexpected. Everyone expects there to be crime and corruption in unions, but they don't consider it to be as glamorous or interesting as the gangsters-and-cops tropes that they're used to, and that The Wire seemed to many to be about until season 2.
In the context of Simon's slowly-expanding lens of the American city, it makes complete sense, but most viewers aren't aware of that right at the beginning.
Much like GOT, either it grabs you enough to continue in the first few episodes or it doesn't. It's not like it changes the speed of exposition and character development. Unlike GOT it doesn't get worse with time.
Watching it with subtitles is good advice.
I don't think it's slow necessarily, but it's very disorientating (especially at first). Because of this, the whole first season can fail to make any sense, and so feel slow. You miss out on a lot of the value that the characters bring because you don't know WTF is going on.
I tried 2 or 3 times at least to get into it, always failing a few episodes into series one. It took a further watch with the mindset of "I'm going to watch regardless, and trust the recommendations that brought me to it". By the end of the first series, I understood the slang/characters/plot well enough to be rewarding by the rich characters and relationships and loved it. From there all the way to the end of the final series it was plain sailing.
I don't think there's many other series that I've had that experience with, and I really wholeheartedly recommend struggling through the first series (and with subtitles is a great idea), as the whole thing is my favourite TV show of all time.
I think you're right that it doesn't have any big explosive events necessarily, but the story is so great that I don't think it needs the artificial cliffhanger-ness that other 'faster' series may have.
Compared to some of the really slow Sopranos seasons (I remember the Carmela-Furio season that just dragged on and on) it’s practically 24 :)
I never watched the Sopranos or West Wing, so I can't speak to them. I enjoyed The Wire (bought the box set!), but it's still a slow-paced drama. If that's your jam, it's fantastic. If it's not, it's still worth a shot (it's that good), but it's not "try it for 18 hours if you don't like the genre" good. All IMO of course. And full disclosure: I'm not a big fan of dramas, but The Wire still grabbed me. Hence my caution that it's somewhat slow compared to other fare.
I should watch it again, it's been a long time and it is worth it.
As a Brit, I have no wish for subtitles. I found no difficulty with the slang or accent. There are many parts of the UK that are much more indecipherable!
I've been enjoying the podcast Way Down In The Hole as an episode by episode recap having already watched it through a few times. Stacked with extra trivia and the insight of two black hosts adds things I didn't see.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-wire-way-down-in-t...
Is there any other similar podcasts I should listen? Especially on culture that is outside of my white European sphere?
I stopped after the first episode. It seemed neat but it was just displaced by other stuff. Then around the third or fourth or so season was being aired, my coworkers were talking about it and I dove back in.
Now after reading this thread I'm thinking I should dive into The Wire next.
As a non-native English speaker, I can confirm that the dialog was basically impenetrable for me without subtitles. Even with subtitles, it took 4-5 episodes before I could confidently claim to be understanding everything the characters were saying. Definitely a revelation for me that this kind of variation exists among English speakers in the same city/country.
It's a bit of a thing here. DC and Baltimore actors will take jobs in New York to get NYC credits on their resumes. They'll sometimes get post office boxes in NYC just so that casting directors won't write them off, then drive up for the actual audition. Only then will they find it possible to get cast for major projects being filmed in the city where they live.
The locals will get background work, hoping to be noticed, and occasionally it even happens.
It's not that there's resentment to The Wire or Homicide, which really kick-started the local television industry. But there's a bitter irony of playing second-fiddle (and third-fiddle) to so many out of towners in a city with a thriving industry and a lot of local talent.
Acting is, of course, a crummy line of work to be in regardless. It's not like your Broadway dreams come true just by moving up I-95.
It was jarring enough that I stopped watching it as a result, might be time to try again (I was on Season 3), it was a great show from what I saw up to that point.
I'm currently watching the Wire because I was convinced by another HN comment last week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25527957
This is a persistent myth. They were all professional actors.
I think the only actor to that description that played a 'major' role on the show was the one who played Snoop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicia_Pearson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Andrews
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvin_Williams_(actor)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Norris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_D%27Addario
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Landsman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Burton_(Baltimore)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Earle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Zorzi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwan_Glover
And don't forget the show's creators:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Simon - former journalist at the Baltimore Sun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Burns - former Baltimore police and public school teacher.
as posted above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25626484
If you have not seen The Wire, here are some suggestions:
* Watch it with subtitles, so you can understand the slang of the different subcultures of Baltimore. Otherwise, it's easy to miss many important details. The actors -- many of whom are actual former gang members, police officers, judges, politicians, teachers, etc. from the city Baltimore, speak as the characters would in real life -- not always in easy-to-understand dialects or accents.
* Bookmark the Wikipedia page on The Wire's characters, so you can look them up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Wire_characters -- there are well over a hundred important characters, and sometimes it's a good idea to pause the show and look a character up to refresh your memory if you don't remember a particular name.
* If you're not naturally interested in Baltimore's police and drug gang subcultures, you may find the first season a bit slow and much of the dialogue full of seemingly unnecessary detail. I would recommend sticking with it through at least the beginning of the second season, which is mainly about longshoremen and unions, before passing judgment. The Wire is not about police, nor about drug gangs. It's about the city of Baltimore.