Wonder where my next fix is coming from…
I’ve just finished watching the final few episodes of the final season of The Wire. I feel compelled to post something, even though it’s late and I’m still trying to get my head around it.
I guess the main thing I’ve taken from it is that, if television has one great advantage over cinema, it’s the opportunity to develop characters over a period of days, rather than just a couple of hours. By my reckoning, across the five seasons, I’ve watched almost sixty hours of television.
I’ve developed an intimate fondness for at least a dozen characters representing every strand of Baltimore’s civic DNA, and a working familiarity with maybe a hundred more. Not one of them stands up as the paragon of virtue, nor one could be written off as being all bad. Real people don’t live at those extremes, we simply orientate ourselves by the notion of them.
Part of the reason The Wire works so well is because its not written episodically. It has none of the clumsiness of 24 or Heroes, clumsily contrived to reach a cliff-hanger finale at regular intervals of 45 minutes. Instead it ebbs and flows, a tide of circumstance and observation carrying the rhythmic narrative back and forth.
As each a season ends, the camera may take a moment to reflect upon on the themes it has explored, or the particular context in which it has been situated, but an abiding sense prevails that though the characters may come and go, the city lives on, a constant, making gods of men, then turning them to ashes.
Maybe the producers realised that it would never reach its full potential for as long as it was being shown in weekly chunks, broken up into twelve minutes of drama for every six of advertising. I tried watching it as such, and gave up after a couple of episodes, preferring to watch it in film-size portions, comfortably enjoying three or four hour-long episodes back-to-back without more than the occasional tea break. Even if I stopped it was often only because I was forcing myself to prolong the pleasure, giving me time to digest the latest developments, and to reflect upon some new defining moments.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the future of televised drama. Call it long-form cinema. Draw me in, involve me, make me feel a part of the world the story lives in, then sell it to me by the boxset. When it’s as good as this, I don’t care what it costs, I’ll beg, borrow or steal if I have to. I just want more.
Tags: the wire
October 6th, 2008 at 4:48 am
This may sound a little strange considering the content, but have you seen HBO’s “Rome” yet? So, so good. I was completely addicted to that as well. If you’re looking for a really consuming drama, I’d recommend it.
October 6th, 2008 at 5:05 am
Like the new layout!
sorry to hear you’ve reached the end of this… it’ll leave a huge hole in your evenings. A hole that’s damn near impossible to fill.
next stop, you have to journey to Deadwood, the Baltimore of the old west.
And after that, Mad Men.
October 6th, 2008 at 6:37 am
With regards to this:
“Maybe the producers realised that it would never reach its full potential for as long as it was being shown in weekly chunks, broken up into twelve minutes of drama for every six of advertising.”
It was on HBO in the US meaning zero ad breaks. Meaning Simon had the luxury of creating a full hour of nothing but The Wire. I’m sure he’d be pissed to see it play with commercials elsewhere in the world, though.
October 6th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
BB – re. Rome – I’ve heard of this, but I haven’t seen it. Being honest, it’s not a historical setting I’m instantly drawn to, but then if somebody had been trying to sell me a cops and robbers show set in Baltimore I probably wouldn’t have bitten their arm off. I’ll keep an eye out for it.
Dane – I owe you for putting me onto The Wire in the first place – your empassioned tweets marked it as a must-see, and so it was. On that basis, you can rest assured I’ll be taking in Deadwood next up, (even if it does have Lovejoy in it).
I had no idea HBO meant no ad breaks. I didn’t think there was a channel in the US that didn’t punctuate television with a copious amount of advertising. Presumably it works on some kind of subscription basis, like Film Four. With the opportunity for ad avoidance that PVRs like Sky+ provide, it’s clear that the model needs to change one way or another.
I started watching Season 5 on the FX channel over here, which is saturated with advertising. It was diabolical, a disgrace, an unacceptable dilution and disruption of story-telling that deserves so much better. It was a no-brainer to cut it loose and wait for the boxset.
When I told my cousin this (he being head of strategy at Channel 5) he went ashen-faced and conceded that people are no longer unconditionally accepting the place of advertising on television, and are looking at their options. If that means guys like Simon can write knowing that they’ll get at least an hour of continuous screen time, and the decline of advertising isn’t undermining the revenue model on which shows like The Wire are produced, it can only be a good thing, right?
October 6th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I’ve been fortunate enough to see both David Simon and Armando Iannucci give talks recently, and both of them cast light on this discussion.
Apparently HBO repeat new series throughout the week and then regularly afterwards, and an assurance of this was written into Simon’s contract when he began The Wire. This allowed him to write secure in the knowledge that the audience would be able to catch up during the week if they missed a new episode (ever tried skipping a couple of eps of The Wire then trying to figure out what the hell’s going on?). And that was before the days of HBO On Demand, PVRs, (legal) downloads and, of course, before the series had been released as on DVD. It’s been suggested that part of the reason for The Wire’s atrocious ratings (on top of, sadly, the tendency of programmes with majority black cast to bomb in the US) is its complexity – not that the audience are (necessarily) stupid, just that picking it up mid-series is pretty much impossible, and certainly much less satisfying than getting the whole thing sequentially. Simon himself said that this “multiplatform” (bleh!) approach to delivering the show was crucial to the popularity of the show, and made the point that the UK audience came to it almost entirely via DVD. After all, as Dan points out, the insertion of ads pretty much butchers a show like this.
Iannucci used HBO and other American subscription channels as an example of where drama was being done right, and called on the BBC to start a subscription service. It goes without saying that the ad-funded terrestrial networks are thinking long and hard about their financial models and their very futures. C4 is manoeuvering for a larger slice of the public service broadcasting pie (maybe even of the licence fee), while as far back as 2004 Five was in talks to merge with C4.
Article about Iannucci lecture here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/25/bbc.television
October 6th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I think it’s fascinating – and great – that something like The Wire can fail so emphatically in its television debut, yet go on to achieve such reknown off the back of supposedly secondary formats.
It’s no myth that the majority of movies don’t break even off the back of their theatrical release, and only really start to rake in the big bucks through home entertainment and merchandising. I can think of many (actually, any) examples of movies tanking at cinemas, then going gangbusters via an alternate medium of delivery.
I suppose the best examples tend to be ‘cult’ movies that go on to exhibit a particular prescience or cultural significance years after release. I’m sure there are musical equivalents as well, but I’m damned if I can think of any.
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
October 18th, 2008 at 10:58 am
[...] a lot of film directors manage in two hours, and he does it with a hell of a lot more style. If The Wire is the very best of long-form cinema, this must be the ultra-short-form equivalent. addthis_url = [...]
March 19th, 2009 at 1:02 am
Exactly.
I don’t think I could have put it better even if I had adequate time to think. I’d have illustrated it with Omar too…he’s such a badass!
March 20th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
I started watching The Wire because a guy called Dane McMaster (commenting above as ‘dmcm’) in our LA office recommended it so vehemently.
He made the point that of all the characters, only Omar is completely uncompromising in the face of the various pressures cascading through Baltimore’s different social hierarchies, from the corners and the cop shops to the courthouses and the mayor’s office.
Also, he’s probably the best example of something I flagged up above – that none of the characters in The Wire is all bad, or all good. But they’re all there – there aren’t any hollow stereotypes conjured up to serve the storyline. The storyline serves them.