1) First there was the non fiction book Homicide : A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. He was a crime reporter who wangled a year long assig1) First there was the non fiction book Homicide : A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. He was a crime reporter who wangled a year long assignment “embedded” (as they later called it) in Baltimore’s homicide department. This book is a five star true crime classic.
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2) Then there was a tv show Homicide: Life on the Street (rather groanworthy subtitle) which lasted from 1993 to 1999 and was constantly brilliant, constantly rated by all critics, and constantly got poor ratings. Some of the stories and characters were from David Simon’s book.
[image] 3) Then there was this (“unofficial”) guide which is excellent fan fodder and came out before the final 7th series. Reading it has inspired me to commence a marathon REWATCH which involved a trip to the loft and an exhumation of the DVD BOX SETS I got many years ago and a checking of my dusty unused dvd player and a changing of the remote control batteries. Wow! Retro technology! Yes, it still works. (Random note : all that “DVD Extras” material they used to add I guess is now consigned to landfill since the demise of dvds.)
4) Bizarrely, then there was a graphic novelization of David Simon’s book by Philippe Squarzoni which came out in 2023 – it’s really great.
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*
Aside from chronicling and celebrating this pre-Wire wundershow, David Kalat glumly and waspishly recounts the running war between the show’s producers and the network, NBC. Ned Beatty explained why he left the show : “It wasn’t about the money. I loved it in the beginning. Some of it was the best thing I’d ever done. But it got to the point where they wanted to see people get shot and car chases and all that. Which is not what homicide detectives really do.” So yes, the front office was pushing that line (e.g. demanding less ugly men and more sexy women on the show) and yes, the show did sometimes wander into lurid tabloid evil-twin serial killer territory, to their shame, but mostly they didn’t and with a dream cast including Andre Braugher and Melissa Leo they stuck to their grimy uncomfortable truth telling week in and week out.
This book gets some reviewers’ goats (I’m not sure there are multiple goats, I think actually there’s only one) – take the title of one review in the This book gets some reviewers’ goats (I’m not sure there are multiple goats, I think actually there’s only one) – take the title of one review in the online magazine The Critic
Militant humourlessness A pseudo-history of British comedy leaves one depressed
Or this from the Irish Independent
British comedy is no laughing matter, at least in this writer’s hands David Stubbs has created a readable social history, even if his diatribes and humourlessness jar with his subject
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I can see this – Davis loves to tick off 60s and 70s tv shows for their poor attitudes towards everyone who isn't a straight white middle class male (i.e. the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived) and he is most eager to finger comedians who were feeding us Conservative propaganda and quite often were actually voting Conservative too! Screech! This for David puts a person beyond the pale. He is the living embodiment of the modern assumption that of course comedy either is or should be socially progressive; and furthermore, that the kindly lefties have successfully prised this thing called comedy out of the dead hands of the sexists, racists, homophobes and transphobics and things are so much better now than they ever were.
Article from The Guardian in 2020 :
Rightwing comedians not funny enough for BBC shows, says insider Source says producers have sought Conservative-leaning performers, but most ‘aren’t very good’
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Some of the comedy David (and the rest of us) grew up with which made us roll around busting our sides back then has not worn well- say for example Manuel in Fawlty Towers. It’s the same problem readers find in old novels – my favourite example is Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, a 1938 comedy which is so cute and sweet and funny until suddenly Miss Pettigrew explains to her maid why it’s impossible to marry a Jew. We all know how many times we can suddenly bang our noses on these ancient taken-for-granted contemptuous attitudes. When does this oldfangled nastiness wreck the comedy and when can we shrug and overlook it?
Unfortunately David, when he constantly berates old comedy for its bad attitudes, does indeed sound like an old fart grump somewhat (oh no!) like myself. His book is quite compelling (for British comedy fans only I should think) but it’s not a barrel of laughs. For instance, he loves Monty Python but is very keen to expose its unacceptable parts – talking about one of Terry Gilliam’s animations he says :
that it is the woman who is “liberated” from her clothing, and not the man, says much about how male-determined, how cis-heteronormative, ideas of sexual freedom were in the 1960s and 1970s.
One thing that came across very strongly, and demonstrated poignantly how different those times were, is what television meant to people back then :
The good, the bad, the rubbish, the grown-up and incomprehensible: you watched the telly because the terrible alternative was not watching the telly.
For watching the television, regardless of what was on, was what you did, the unthinkable option being to switch the TV off and go do something infinitely more boring instead.
Well, I guess if you substitute your phone or your laptop for the television, you will still get the same idea.
I give this book points for covering a lot of ground, from Chaplin to The Office. But yes, it's very earnest
Still, it was great to fund someone else who hates Spike Milligan!
I really don’t find Spike Milligan very funny. And when I say not funny, I mean deadeningly unfunny. … I sometimes feel if just one reader is persuaded, after reading this book, not to bother watching Q (Spike’s tv show) this entire enterprise will have been worthwhile.
Very well said David. So true.
Tommy Cooper joke :
I went to the doctor, I said “I’ve broken my arm in several places”. “Well” he said “you shouldn’t go to those places.”
To walk like a man in this world is to burn so slowly you won’t notice it until your soul has turned black.
Almost nobody gives a damn about your life To walk like a man in this world is to burn so slowly you won’t notice it until your soul has turned black.
Almost nobody gives a damn about your life but you, and…there’s a good chance you don’t even give as much of a damn as you think.
Not lines from the show, but they might have could have been - lines written instead by our two authors Seitz and Sepinwall. They chew, they ruminate, they pontificate, they simplify, they complicate, they exegesate, although I think that last one isn’t really a word.
The last 100 pages is interviews they did with David Chase, Sopranos creator, but I skipped that. Really The Sopranos has got nothing to do with him any more, it belongs to the fans. So who cares what he thinks.
So - Five weeks, 86 episodes = 72 hours of viewing, plus however long it took to plough through this dense, engrossing commentary. Rewatching The Sopranos whilst the whole Brexit political chaos is raining down here in Britain - it has been a pretty strange intense month.
Enough panegyric has been written about The Sopranos, but this I will say.
The show portrays the ultra macho gangster life, wives and kids at home (probably a beautiful home too), goomahs stashed somewhere else, strippers on tap if the fancy takes, enough booze to float an aircraft carrier, all the hi jinks and scams and sudden adrenaline rushes of the beatdowns and whack jobs and so on and so forth, so that the fanboys get all their guilty jollies, for sure. But The Sopranos does not let you get away with that. On a regular basis these almost charming rogues will turn around and do something so graceless, sociopathic, nasty and wretched that you realise exactly what these guys are. They are really disgusting and horrible, is what. (And it doesn't let the enabling complicit women off either.)
Plus, this is a show about therapy, and it goes for the jugular there too. Our main therapist, Dr Jennifer Melfi, is as exposed as the gangsters. She continually talks over Tony’s head (even after 8 years!) and makes only the blandest ever observations on all Tony’s entrenched problems. Not that he can really be very open about them. If this is what therapy is like, one might think, I’ll save my money and buy a crate of whiskey.
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So many great characters, so much unforgettable acting. Three favourites (leaving aside the brilliant James Gandolfini) :
Robert Iler as AJ, Tony’s depressed, deadbeat son, who doesn’t smile until the last quarter of the final season
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Vincent Curatola as Johnny Sacramoni, neurotic miserable New York boss with a fuse almost shorter than Tony’s
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Aida Turturro as Janice, Tony’s terminally aggravating sister
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Janice: There's a Zuni saying: "For every twenty wrongs a child does, ignore nineteen." Tony: There's an old Italian saying: "You fuck up once, you lose two teeth." ...more
I just finished a marathon headbanging re-watching of Breaking Bad and this is the perfect readalong book, lots of lovely comments on each & every epiI just finished a marathon headbanging re-watching of Breaking Bad and this is the perfect readalong book, lots of lovely comments on each & every episode, occasional articles on such essential questions as Exactly What Happened with the Damned Ricin Cigarette? (I'm still not sure I understand) and gems of background info such as the actor who went for an audition but couldn't drive so his uncle drove him there and the uncle who wasn't an actor got a job and the actual actor didn't (that's showbiz). (It was Bogdan the car wash owner).
Nothing is perfect and there are ungreat moments in Breaking Bad, some of them major - the death of Gus Fring is like something out of I Saw the Devil (South Korea, 2010) and completely inappropriate; and the machine gun in the boot in the last ep is quite ridiculous and a dismal end; but the real ending was the penultimate episode which is brilliant.
This is the darkest, most miserable show ever. That's a recommendation, if you haven't seen it.
Nomination for the most tortured character in all of fiction : Jesse Pinkman.
This book is total fan fodder and completely inessential but it's so very very pretty and since all this stuff is on Amazon for around two of y[image]
This book is total fan fodder and completely inessential but it's so very very pretty and since all this stuff is on Amazon for around two of your English pounds I'm just saying if you like this show you could do worse.
This is fun : in one episode Walter in a fit of irritation storms out of his house and throws the giant pizza he has just bought onto the roof.... here he is remorsefully cleaning it up the next day...
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The house was a real house and now fans track down the real house in Albuquerque and throw pizzas onto the roof (or try to). Much fun for the family actually living there! Many laughs all round!...more
Buffy is shocked to find that Dawn, her annoying little sister is, in fact, a mystical and non-corporeal Key sent to her inWHAT HAPPENS IN SEASON FIVE
Buffy is shocked to find that Dawn, her annoying little sister is, in fact, a mystical and non-corporeal Key sent to her in human form by an order of monks as a desperate ploy to stop it falling into the hands of this season’s Big Bad. This turns out to be an incredibly ancient god called Glorificus whose human form switches between Glory, a spoilt Californian Valley Girl type, and Ben, a sympathetic intern at the hospital where Joyce, Buffy’s mother, is being treated for a brain tumour. Buffy finds she’s no match for Glory, but feels attracted to Ben… Dawn, who has been programmed with a full complement of memories about life with Buffy and Joyce, is as shocked as everyone else to find she is not human. … Spike (a vampire) has a vivid erotic dream about Buffy… and forces Warren, a geek with advanced technological capabilities, to build him a robot Buffy lookalike, henceforth known as the Buffybot.
Glory drains Tara’s brain and leaves her a drooling idiot… The Scoobies (friends of Buffy) realising they are helpless against such a powerful entity, flee into the desert where they are attacked by the Knights of the Byzantium, who want to destroy Dawn before Glory can use her blood to open a portal between dimensions, thus bringing about the End of the World.
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I’m thinking that the above could be the most bonkers plot of a mainstream tv show ever. More bonkers than Doctor Who, and that’s very bonkers. I’m also wondering why they didn’t put the Buffybot into full production immediately, it seems a no brainer. But I couldn’t find one for sale anywhere.
So it seems the plot logic of this show was of the free-floating kind and the fans couldn’t have cared less. They just went with it. I should learn to be more lighthearted. Away with leaden causality and verisimilitude! Let me channel my inner Slayer.
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The BFI (British Film Institute) usually produce concise and intellectually terrifying critical monographs about Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari, or La Dolce Vita, or Vertigo, but this charming gallop through the Buffyverse is just pure fandoration, which is a word I just made up. Anne Billson’s book is a love letter to both Buffy and her younger self.
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More books on film and tv should be like this one....more
1. The first thing I see is that there is no editor mentioned on the cover or the spine. That is strange. On the title page the editor/annotator is re1. The first thing I see is that there is no editor mentioned on the cover or the spine. That is strange. On the title page the editor/annotator is revealed to be Luke Dempsey. Hi Luke!
2. The annotations are very basic and appear to be designed mostly for non-British people who don't know the first thing about British culture or 15-year-old British kids who don't know anything that happened before 2010. Examples :
Petula Clark is a British singer famous for "Downtown", an international hit in 1964, as well as many other songs of that era.
Freeman Hardy willis was a chain of British shoe stores.
Prebendaries help run cathedrals.
"Rabbiting" means to talk at a rapid rate.
Some of the annotations are a little less stiff and straightfaced :
Okehampton, a town on the northern edge of Dartmoor, did not get a bypass road until 1985.
It should of course read "daffodils" not "worker ants". (Note 16 page 790)
3. Dotted around are one-page "sidebars" (I have such a loathing of that word, and I can't explain why) which give summaries of post-Python careers, an account of early reactions to the tv shows, influences on the Pythons, i.e. The Goons – these are all welcome but very few & far between and when you stumble over them you can't find them again because there's no mention of them on the contents page, grrrrr.
4. This vast volume claims to be definitive and as regards the 45 original tv epiodes, it really is – cram full of screenshots on every page, big and glossy and likely to put you in the hospital if you drop in on your foot. Anything else would be surely asking too much, for this particular volume. But there should be another similar book which should include the scripts of the LP records (which always get forgotten, some excellent sketches on them) and the movie scripts, and anything they did live which wasn't in either. THEN you'll be definitive.
5. Mr Dempsey is quite right to point out in his introduction that "some of the sketches are horribly dated and not very funny, and I suspect they never were". Non-members of the Python cult seem to think that cultists believe everything they did was pure comedy amethyst, but we really don't.
6. The Pythons, like the Beatles, had pretty unsatisfactory solo careers. Palin was always the Python McCartney, suave, knowing and intensely friendly, and he turned into Britain's favourite world traveller, making endless Around-the-World-in-80-Days cosiness for an audience whose appetite for watching someone else on holiday knows no bounds. Eric Idle seemed to run out of steam very quickly and do nothing which was sorrowful to see as his fantastic monologues were amongst the best python moments. Terry Jones got himself a nice gig as a popular history writer and professional Chaucer fan. Graham Chapman kicked the bucket, and that seemed to slow his output down to a crawl. Cleese did the brilliant Fawlty Towers, but after A Fish Called Wanda which was great, the silence was deafening. A talent frittered away, I think – which is a noble British comic tradition (see Peter Cook and Eric Idle). Terry Gilliam did the best – from Jabberwocky through to The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, he's done ten films in a row that are all worth seeing. Who else can you say that about?
7. It has its little flaws, sure, but I think Python fans will want this....more
I loved this actor, of course mainly for his performance of Tony Soprano, surely one of the most indelible In memoriam - James Gandolfini 1961 - 2013.
I loved this actor, of course mainly for his performance of Tony Soprano, surely one of the most indelible characters in all of tv or film. His lightning fast mood changes, his complexities, his careening from grotesque brutality to soft concern and back again, his unpredictability, his terrifying physical presence - this was a dream marriage between the actor and the role and the writing, it was perfect. I was shocked to hear of his death, he was only 51. So here's my revived review of this book about the Sopranos with some great quotes from Tony. Can there be anyone who hasn't seen The Sopranos? If so, you couldn't do yourself a bigger favour. You will see fantastic performances and you'll get your heart broken in a number of places and you'll see what great fiction can be like, and how great tv is today's Shakespeare and James Gandolfini was its Italian American Macbeth.
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******
We are coming to the end of our marathon rewatching of the entire Sopranos show, that's 86 episodes at 50 minutes each, a cool 71.6 hours or 9.5 days of viewing if you were putting in the standard seven and a half hour working day plus one hour for lunch. (It has taken us since Christmas in case you might think we have quit our jobs just to watch the Sopranos. Although I can see why some people would do that.)
My head tells me The Wire is the greatest tv show ever, but my heart says it's The Sopranos. The Wire's perspective is god-like - the cops observe the hoppers and we watch the watchers, and also we get to see how the great wheels revolve, how the schools mesh with politics, how that engages the media, how the police operate with the newspapers, how the unions deal with the politicians and the drug trade, wheels within wheels, cogs and circuits and little flickering lights, the vast machine and the tiny human parts to it, some getting squashed, some being the squashers, but all part of the universe called Baltimore aka the City aka our modern life, the one we built but didn't create, the one which creates us, our jobs, our homes and our possibilities.
The Sopranos is not like that, instead it's from the inside out, it builds from one single family and then it gets complicated. It's less lofty, less grand, and as you may know, when it isn't dealing in Macbethian tragedy and the horrible psychology of denial it's funny. And impossible to discuss without hauling out a few of the hundreds of favourite quotes. Tony Soprano has the usual problems with his teenage kids. He discusses the surly AJ, with his shrink Dr Melfi :
Tony: He tells me he's got no purpose. Dr. Melfi: And how did you answer him? Tony: I told him that it costs 150 grand to bring him up so far, so if he's got no purpose I want a fucking refund.
Tony discusses parenting difficulties with his wife :
Carmela: As a parent today, you are over a barrel no matter what you do. You take away her car you become her chauffeur. You ground her you've got to stay home weekends and be prison guards.
Tony: If you throw her out, social services will bring her back and we'd be in front of the judge. She's not 18 yet.
Carmela: That's your solution? To throw your daughter out?
Tony: All I'm sayin', with the laws today you can't even restrain your kid physically. She could sue you for child abuse.
Carmela: There has to be consequences.
Tony: And there will be, I hear ya okay. Let's just not overplay our hand. Because if she figures out we're powerless, we're fucked.
Some early morning family conversation :
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Meadow: I don't think sex should be a punishable offense.
Tony: You know honey, that's where I agree with you. I don't think sex should be a punishable offense either. But I do think talking about sex at the breakfast table is a punishable offense. So no more sex talk, okay.
Meadow: It's the 90s. Parents are supposed to discuss sex with their children.
Tony: Yeah, but that's where you're wrong. You see out there it's the 1990s but in this house it's 1954.
Tony on his hippy sister :
Whatever her scam is, I'll be five thousand dollars lighter before she raindances back to the commune.
Dr Melfi on Tony's mother:
You know your mother is always talking about infanticide.
Tony and his Russian girlfriend:
Tony: What is that? Irina: Chicken Soup for the Soul. Tony: You should read Tomato Sauce for your Ass. It's the Italian version.
And of course there is usually some business to be conducted:
Richie: You called to complain yesterday? That's our policy, it's written on the side of our trucks. Double your garbage back if you're not satisfied. Siraj: I complained because you didn't make full pickups on 12/16 and 20, and then I get charged double! You charged me for pickups you missed. Richie: My dispatcher asked you: if you're not satisfied, did you want your garbage back? Siraj: Of course I don't want garbage back! Richie: Then you're satisfied!
And as they're very strong Catholics, sometimes they wonder if they're going straight to hell. Here's Paulie explaining what Purgatory is to a nervous Christopher:
You add up all your mortal sins and multiply that number by 50. Then you add up all your venial sins and multiply that by 25. You add that together and that's your sentence. I figure I'm gonna have to do 6,000 years before I get accepted into heaven and 6,000 years is nothin' in eternity terms. I can do that standing on my head.
Uncle Junior on the state of his life:
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I got the Feds so far up my ass I can taste brylcreem.
I would also like to celebrate the many great malapropisms the guys spray around – "we should create a little dysentery in the ranks", "don't worry about it, there's no stigmata", "Quasimodo predicted all of this", "we're in a fucking stagmire"... Dickens would have loved this show. Also Freud!
This book here is a gorgeous piece of fan fodder, recommended for all fans.
Postscript:
This book is written by Brett Martin, it's on the title page, but for some reason I can't fathom his name does not appear on the cover or the spine. What's that all about, Melcher Media Publishers? Fuck you! Name the author on the damn cover! He wrote it!...more
HE HAS NOTHING TO DECLARE EXCEPT HIS GENIUS, IT SEEMS
Would you like to read an introduction to Hamlet written by Shakespeare himself? Not if it went sHE HAS NOTHING TO DECLARE EXCEPT HIS GENIUS, IT SEEMS
Would you like to read an introduction to Hamlet written by Shakespeare himself? Not if it went something like “I knew when I began Hamlet that I wished to blow the conventions of the revenge tragedy sky-high, and by God that’s what I did. Hamlet’s soliloquies are, I feel, the finest in all my 36 plays and I feel that with the character of Ophelia…I must thank HBO for allowing me the space to demonstrate the full extent of my genius…” And blah blah blah.
No, me neither. But that’s what we get here. Yes, David Simon, I do think you’re one of America’s national treasures, I do I do I do, but don’t write intros like that any more! I beseech thee!
THE WIRE JUST ABOUT BROKE MY COOLOMETER
A thick pall of self congratulation hangs over The Wire, both amongst its makers and amongst its viewers. How cool are we? says everyone. And it’s true, while I was watching The Wire my coolometer has reached its maximum 100% reading at times, and that hardly ever happened – I think the last time was when Buzz Lightyear was confronted with his own cliché-spouting doppelganger in Toy Story 2, a moment of existential catharsis for him and for us too (“was I ever really this stupid?”). It’s good to crow and to tell everyone loudly and shrilly how great you are, this is something we tell our children every day, and the boys who put together The Wire turn out to be very articulate in this regard :
My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narratives : fuck the average reader. (David Simon, p 382)
The Wire is the most anti-tv show out there. The vision is almost completely uncompromising, makes almost no concessions to the audience. There’s zero wish fulfillment in it. (Dennis Lehane, p322)
David Simon on himself and his co-writers :
We hang out in the Baltimores of this world writing what we want to write about and never keeping one eye on whether or not it could sell as much as a drama that had, say, more white faces, more women with big tits, and more stuff that blows up or squirts blood real good… I don’t mean this to come across as some snotty declaration of classist, pseudo-proletarian pretension. (David Simon on himself and his co-writers)
BUT THAT’S ENOUGH ABOUT THOSE MOPES
It was axiomatic with British tv fans in the 60s to 80s that American tv was amazingly dreadful, with maybe a couple of sitcoms allowed to be mildly amusing. Serious tv drama was done by the BBC, and that was that. Things changed in the 1990s and now you would have to be Tommy the blind deaf and dumb boy or his similarly-afflicted sister Tammy not to notice that American tv drama is not just the best but is continually redefining what is possible and how good the best can be. The Wire is one of these redefining shows, but it won’t be the last. It’s not my favourite, though. I think it’s extremely easy to admire but quite hard to love. Yeah, the sweep, yeah the Tolstoyevskian Dickensian panorama, the anatomy of a city and yeah the America You Do Not See On Television, and yeah modern urban life, the horror, the horror. All of that.
But Homicide, David Simon’s previous big show, made me weep and howl, made me tremble with fear and exclaim loudly. The Wire made me look at my tv for hours and hours and purr like a cat. If you crept up you could hear me purring softly “This is some cool shit, very nice, yeah” but I wasn’t weeping and howling. But just mention the rollcall of detectives from Hommy – Munch, the great meldrick lewis, the Shakespearian Pembleton, Kay, the wounded Bayliss, the tragic Giardello, the self-immolating Kellerman – I weep, I howl. That was my show.
Now something strange happened between David Simon writing Hommy and 10 years later The Wire, and I don’t think anyone has commented on it. I couldn’t work it out. In Homicide the Homicide Unit itself is thought of as the elite of police, it’s not easy to become a murder cop, they only take the best. In The Wire, suddenly there are all manner of incompetents working murders, they’ve got poor attitudes, they’re lazy, all they really like is the overtime. What happened?
Back to the Wire.
GOOD WIRE STUFF
- It's the only place on God's earth you're ever likely to see and hear burly African American guys singing lustily along to The Pogues! Not once, but twice!
- It has not one but TWO "Renee Zellweger" moments - years and years ago I'd never heard of the ever fragrant Miss Zellweger and I watched Briget Jones Diary - it was pretty good in a cosy little furry bunny with a little pink nose kind of way - then someone put on the Extras and gor blimey - she wasn't English at all! She was from texas and had a drawl a mile wide! That was the best American-doing-English ever. So in The Wire it was the other way round - McNulty and Stringer Bell turned out to be British! I found this out half way through series four... so best British doing American to them.
BAD WIRE STUFF
- the frankly stupid and unbelievable character of Brother Mouzone – what kind of shit was that? BM looks like a character from the worst kind of cliched thriller. Awful.
- the only marginally less frankly stupid and unbelievable character of Butchie – how does a blind guy get to be a mover and shaker in the lethal drug underworld? No offence, I’m sure he was a nice guy and all.
- the really earnest amounts of black gayness. It was like – I don’t think this has been done before so let’s do it a lot.
- two or three gross and gratuitous rumpy pumpy scenes with McNulty (obligatory shot of hot girl on top), Daniels/Pearlman – that particular sex scene was just weird – and Keema with some random pickup. Like HBO said Okay David, love the show, love it, but you have to admit – not many women, and no sex at all! C’mon, just do us one little favour. So he stomped off and slotted these scenes in.
- I might argue that the show fails with its big strong male characters – in fact The Wire is almost content to perpetuate the mythic aura of these guys rather than explicate. We don’t know how Avon got to be the kingpin he already is at the beginning; and when a new overlord appears in series 3, Marlo, he has no story – one day he’s not there, next day , unsmiling, death-dealing, implacable, unhurried, respected and accepted by all, there he is. How? The Wire does not go there. The Wire only skates on the surface of the private lives of these big men. In its hectic ambition to encompass the whole world of Baltimore some important aspects are either elided or remained elusive or were backed away from. (In Godfather the rise of Vito Corleone was mapped out in detail.)
- likewise we have almost zero insight into the lives of the slingers’ customers, the fiends. Oh but what about Bubs? Well, Bubs is a completely exceptional fiend – supersnitch, court jester, heart of gold, resourceful, maybe the only character we actually love in the whole epic. He’s a fiend all right but not like the pitiful regular junkies we only catch glimpses of, like Michael’s mother. They mooch up to the corner, make their buy, and mooch off. How do they live?
- A few of the scenes people like a lot seem contrived – the crime scene in which Bunk & McNulty reconstruct a murder and for 8 minutes use only the word “Fuck” in all its nuanced eloquence; and the scene in The Pit when D’Angelo explains the rules of chess and of course makes all these ironic parallels with the rules of The Game – eh, come on, a bit too cute for me.
- the antics of Herc & Carver, there it seems to give us a little light relief in the same spirit that Willie the Shake threw in scenes of buffoonery for the groundlings – maybe a little unworthy
- no mention of white middle class drug use which is tolerated in some echelons – The Wire has us thinking that all drug users are poor ghetto dwellers and I believe this is not accurate
THAT SAID, A CONFESSION
I’m one of those snobs who never watches tv, only dvds. Well, except that my family (all two of them) insist on dragging me into watching Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor. But that’s okay, because SCD has all these gorgeous women on it. And X Factor is like some kind of annual evangelical religious revival which sweeps Britain every autumn. Remember when John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus? Well, The X Factor is bigger than Jesus. It’s even bigger than Lady Diana, if that’s not sacrilege. But that’s okay. Watching X Factor stops me from becoming a complete elitist. It gives me the common touch. Can’t talk to people about whether the novel has a future but you can talk about Wagner (who the hell is voting for that idiot?) and whether Cher is a chav. The Wire is perhaps the first tv show where the main audience has been like me – we saw it on the box sets. This may be a very important consideration for future programme makers.
The Wire is obviously great, a wondrous milestone, and is an essential meditation on a timeless human problem, which is the ineradicable desire of people, all people, to get loaded, to get out of their heads, to get enough medicine inside them to settle if only for a fleeting moment their frayed lives, and the equally adamantine determination of their rulers to stop them. If we stuff Bunk and McNulty into appropriate clothes and shove them out of the time machine in the year 1925 it’ll be bootleg whiskey that’s leading the dance, and in 1825 it’ll be opium dens, and in 1725 it’ll be gin shops – in England anyway. In Baltimore in the early 21st century it was heroin and cocaine. In 50 years time the drugs will have changed, they’ll probably be called sploot or glerk and they’ll be made from the scrotum of a particular type of chinchilla rabbit or something else really hard to get hold of, and guess what also, they’ll be ILLEGAL and this illegality will cause the same problems. But that’s really a topic for another review, this one is about The Wire, sixty hours of the best tv made by some of the most self-satisfied smug bastards this side of Simon Cowell.
POSTSCRIPT
I should mention that this is BOOK of which the above is really not a review is itself a very solid effort, good read, good reference, good pix, I liked it, you will too.
ADDENDUM
Stringer’s drive to become completely legit, to move entirely into real estate, echoes Michael Corleone’s vain promise to Kay in Godfather II.
In The Wire real life bled into fictional – bit parts were played by real police, real politicians, rappers, real corner boys, reformed gangsters, and also the show’s own writers and producers.
Ed Burns : Once a police officer aspires to rank – you would think that stopping crime would be the number one priority – crime is so far down the list you can’t even find it.
George Pelecanos : I make my living writing about people who, because of an accident of birth and circumstance, are less fortunate than me…I often say that my mission is to illuminate and dignify their lives…What goes unsaid is the gnawing feeling that I am also exploiting them for my personal gain.
The morality of The Wire is – the good guys do bad stuff all the time but they know it’s bad while they’re doing it. That’s how we know they’re the good guys.
And finally : Snoop, played by Felicia Pearson, is the scariest female villain ever. She haunts my dreams, pursuing me to a vacant, nail gun in hand. Analyse that!...more
Number Two : That would be telling. Why did you rate all these books one star?
Number Six : Such a good question.
Number Two : So what is the answer?
Number Six : There was an old lady tossed up in a BASKET seventy times as high as the moon.
Number Two : You will not wear me down, Number Six. The butcher with the sharpest knife has the warmest heart.
Number Six : Who are you?
Number Two : I am the new Number Two.
Number Six : Who is Number One?
Number Two : You are Number Six.
Number Six : WHO IS NUMBER ONE ?
Number Two : That would be telling.
Number Six : I see you deleted several of my most trenchant reviews.
Number Two : We would like to know why you wrote them.
Number Six : That would be telling.
Number Two : We already know. We would like you to confirm our knowledge, that's not so much to ask, is it, Number Six?
Number Six : I am not a number. I will not make any deals with you. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, numbered or CENSORED. My life is my OWN. I RESIGN!
I just finished watching Dennis Potter's masterpiece tonight and it knocked me sideways just like it did when I saw it first. This is tv magic, assumiI just finished watching Dennis Potter's masterpiece tonight and it knocked me sideways just like it did when I saw it first. This is tv magic, assuming you can take the weirdness, the harping on about sex, the fruity cheesy songs and the
alienating devices
which Dennis the Menace sprinkles like oofle dust under over sideways and down. In the first five minutes, we're introduced to the miserable marriage of Arthur and Joan Parker, he a swarthy, working class salesman travelling in sheet music, as they used to say, this being the mid-1930s, and with a very healthy interest in his wife's underthings, and she a passably pretty but painfully prim study in repression and genteel disapproval. Pretty soon the lighting in the dining room dims and the popular danceband music of the day swells up. Arthur (Bob Hoskins enjoying his finest hour) turns and lip-synchs
I can remember when most every night at ten We sang an old refrain As we wandered in the moonlight Down Sunnyside Lane We heard the merry lark and if the night was dark I'd steal a kiss again As we wandered in the moonlight Down Sunnyside Lane
If we're seeing this brilliant production for the first time we turn to our companions and go "What just happened??" - then five minutes later, he does it again, only when he opens his north and south, out comes the lilting contralto of Elsie Carlisle :
Each little tear and sorrow Only brings you closer to me Just wait until tomorrow What a happy day that will be
Down Lovers Lane together We’ll wander, you and I Goodbye to stormy weather The clouds will soon roll by
The songs of the day make a perfectly playful, heart-rendingly poignant or ironic, even vicious commentary on the melodramatic twists and turns of this few months in Arthur's life, which will involve infidelity, desertion, abortion, prostitution, rape, and, yes, murder too. And along the way a whole lot of pretend singing and real dancing.
DP's marvellous miniseries has many beautiful and astonishing scenes and I will mention just the one, which will involve a bit of a spoiler. Eileen, the young teacher Arthur meets by chance in Gloucester, has been reading a fairy story to the class of 8 and 9 year olds. The kids have caught a whiff that she might be in trouble, that she might have a bun in the oven, and although they like her, they can’t help giggling when some kid asks how the twin boys in the ridiculously romantic tale of Rapunzel got there – where did the twins come from , Miss? Her face gets red, she suddenly, quite uncharacteristically flares out at them “Be quiet – damn you!” Silence. Silence… then suddenly perky music starts up and the kids who had been sitting shocked spring up, produce instruments from everywhere and turn into a comedy orchestra as Eileen shimmies gleefully around the classroom warbling in the wonderfully euphemistic 1930s manner
Love is good for anything that ails you Maybe there is nothing love can't do A kiss will pep you up A little hug will set you up If dreams have kept you up You don’t need pills, you need thrills
At the end of the song all the instruments disappear, the kids return to their seats, and Eileen glowers at them
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