The fifth and final season of HBO's The Wire is out on DVD today. The New York City's Museum of the Moving Image recently held a panel with the show's creator, David Simon, and several cast members, which you can now hear online. MOMI's Chief Curator David Schwartz, begins the proceedings by saying, "It's hard to figure out how to introduce this program with the proper amount of hyperbole, because the argument among critics seems to be whether this is one of the greatest shows in television history or the greatest show." The New York Post calls it "unmissable TV"; The Scotsman says it's "magnificent" and "seriously addictive."
The fifth and final season of HBO's The Wire is out on DVD today. To mark the occasion, New York City's Museum of the Moving Image recently held a screening and discussion at The Times Center, part of its Pinewood Dialogues on innovative and influential creative figures in film, TV, and digital media, titled Making the Wire. On the panel were the show's creator, David Simon; writer Richard Price; and several cast members, Seth Gilliam (Ellis Carver), Clark Johnson (Gus Haynes), Clark Peter (Lester Freemon), and Wendell Pierce ("Bunk"). You can listen to discussion online at movingimage.us/pinewood.
The panel's moderator, MOMI's Chief Curator David Schwartz, begins the proceedings with this:
It's hard to figure out how to introduce this program with the proper amount of hyperbole, because the argument among critics seems to be whether this is one of the greatest shows in television history or the greatest show. Jacob Weisberg in Slate was one of the first to call it the greatest, and he said something that can't really be topped. He said, "No other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature."
The New York Post's Ben Walters concurs, calling The Wire "unmissable TV" and writing of today's release: "A reviewer once wrote that fans of The Wire without an HBO subscription are like junkies without dope. And come the latest season's release on DVD, they'll be standing in line, jittery, impatient for their fix."
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The Salt Lake Tribune's Vince Horiuchi gives the Season Five DVDs an A-, saying it "is graced with intelligence and, rare in television, carefully scripted irony, to
cap one of the best dramas to ever shine on living room screens."
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's Garret Conti adds this bold assertion to the mix:
The majority of HBO viewers would have no problem pointing to The Sopranos as the best show to ever run on the cable outlet's airwaves. With all due respect to Tony and his henchmen, it would be a mistake. The Wire, brought to life by creator David Simon, surpasses the Mafia hit with a heavy dose of raw emotion, in-depth characters and brilliant storylines.
Furthermore, he concludes, "What makes this fifth season the most important of the preceding four is its role as a culmination piece."
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The Scotsman's Paul Whitelaw says "The Wire is magnificent" and, in fact, that DVD is the perfect medium on which to watch the show in all its complexity of plot, depth of character, and richness of dialog. And, chimes in the paper's books editor David Robinson, "This stuff is seriously addictive." He admits to being an addict of the show himself and of bringing the family along for the ride. "But," writes,
addicted to quality drama that doesn't insult the intelligence of its audience, with a complexity each of us can tease out as we watch it together, that tackles social issues without sentimentality. We've probably had more discussions on morality through watching The Wire than anything else we've ever seen together.
To read the combined coverage of the DVD release, visit thescotsman.scotsman.com.
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For information on and to hear music from the show's official soundtrack, "... and all the pieces matter": Five Years of Music from "The Wire," click here.
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