Why It Ranks
The show that treated television like literature.
Score Breakdown
The Review
The Wire is the most ambitious television series ever conceived. David Simon built a five-season Dickensian novel about Baltimore that examined every institution — the drug trade, the docks, City Hall, the schools, and the media — and found the same rot in all of them. No show has ever respected its audience more. The Wire refuses to simplify, refuses to moralize, and refuses to offer easy answers. It is the only television series that university courses regularly assign as social criticism. Omar Little, Bunk Moreland, and Stringer Bell are among the richest characters ever written for any medium.
Fun Fact
The Wire never won a single Emmy despite being widely regarded as the greatest drama in television history.
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