The Wire

After finishing The Wire I moved onto Sopranos and am about halfway through season 5.

Both are terrific, but The Wire is almost certainly the better show, but a more challenging watch, especially at first.
 
The Sopranos is my favourite TV series of all time, although I have to admit that some of the later seasons aren't as good. Love the ending now, but hated it at first :)

The Wire I feel runs the other way - I was distinctly underwhelmed by the first season but thought later seasons were much better. Season 2 was probably my favourite.
 
The Wire is far and away the best tv program i've ever seen. Currently watching it through for the 3rd time and just completed series 3 again. So much subtlety, and so many new things to pick up on every time you see it. Just watching the opening court scene of series 1 episode 1 for a second time and knowing who everyone is and what they're up to is amazing. So many little things you never noticed as you tried to just get a basic grip on who was who.

Once you are done with The Wire, i strongly recommend you pick up Generation Kill - the iraq war mini series made by the same folk. It's based on a book written by a Rolling Stone journalist who was embedded with the first recon unit that lead the invasion in the 2nd iraq war. If anything it's even more difficult to get to grips with than The Wire, but dedication and repeated viewing are again rewarded in the same way.
 
I tried watching The Wire ep1 when BBC2 were airing it late, I literally fell asleep during it though :/

Prepared to give it another shot one day (big backlog of stuff to watch so maybe not for a couple of years) but wondering if maybe I ought to jump in at a later series. As mentioned it didn't seem easy to follow, probably the sort of show you need to sit down and focus on 100%.
 
Best TV series ever for me too. It was just so rich, and held so many moments that I won't forget, and so many memorable characters. Even when the characters don't seem to be talking about something in relation to the main story line, you infact see it is all important, and what's more, the dialogue is wonderful.
 
probably the sort of show you need to sit down and focus on 100%.
Definitely. You really need to set aside a couple of hours and watch at least two or three episodes back to back.

maybe I ought to jump in at a later series
All of the seasons are interlinked. This isn't like other cop shows where a case is solved every episode.

Ideally you should watch them all in order. However, Season 2 (or possibly 5) is probably the only season you could get away with watching by itself but I wouldn't recommend it as it's still an integral part of the show's main storylines. If you decided to go back and watch the earlier episodes that you'd skipped then you'd have some major spoiler issues.

Perhaps you should try watching Season 1 again but at a more reasonable hour. Set aside enough time to watch at least three episodes. Once Omar shows up you should be hooked.
 
wire starts of slow but halfway through the first season i found myself absolutley hooked, upto the point where i was sitting down before bed to watch one episode and ending up watching 3/4 in a row then being zombiefied at work/uni the next day
 
It took me about 3 episides to get totally hooked into The Wire. Relly fancy watching the whole of Homicide: Life on the Street, which I only saw off & on when it was aired, or going back to Oz.
 
THe Soprano's is good in theory, but in reality, I just found too many of the characters creepy old and fat and it gave it an air of not being at all realistic. There was some good episodes but, I just was never sold on the fact that it came so easily to a bunch of unfit fat slobs, how has some rival group not killed a bunch of overweight prats at any point throughout. Just the whole time I couldn't quite buy into a lot of the storys and characters, though some were great and lots of story lines were good if not believable.

The Wire was more realistic, in that guys died and turnaround was pretty quick, they went to jail or were killed and it never really worked out very well for anyone. It lent it a far more believable feel and a lot of the characters were believable. Almost all the cops were perfectly cast, good actors, good stories and good dialogue. There was a mix of good and bad drug dealers, loads were brilliant, then you've got Method Man who was crap.

Got a little long in the tooth in the final series though as it really just felt like the same thing over and over by that point, the wrap up episodes were ok, but maybe a tad dissappointing, but believable.

Homicide, I remember watching a few eps and I always liked a couple of the main guys but was really too young to watch it often back then and I've tried to get into it a few times but never found it that good. NYPD blue is pretty damn awesome though.
 
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