WASHINGTON – The Writers Guild of America recently 聽“The Wire” as one of the聽ten best-written television shows of all time,聽joining “The Sopranos,” “Seinfeld,” “The Twilight Zone,” “All in the Family,” “M*A*S*H,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Mad Men,” “Cheers” and “The West Wing.”
Of those shows, it’s safe to say that “The Wire” was the least watched during its original TV run, and the most celebrated upon its rediscovery on home video.
Now, after聽a special HBO聽marathon over the holidays, the HD restoration of “The Wire” is聽available for digital purchase on Monday, Jan. 5, with the Blu Ray collection slated for this summer.
The HD restoration is one of the most significant in recent memory. The聽Baltimore-based TV drama debuted back in 2002, several years before widescreen televisions became the norm聽in聽American households.聽Thus, “The Wire”聽was shot in standard definition with a 4:3 aspect ratio, creating a more square-shaped image:
The new high-definition version converts the original 35mm negative into a 16:9 aspect ratio, better suited for your widescreen television聽(the opposite of the “pan and scan” technique, which Turner Classic Movies did a phenomenal job of explaining ).
Creator David Simon says the wider image聽amplifies many scenes of “The Wire.” In one scene聽near the end of Season 2, Simon writes in his , “The dockworkers are all that much more vulnerable, and that much more isolated … when we have the ability to go wider in that rare crane shot.”
However, he says, other scenes lose some power with the wider frame. For example, in the pilot episode, the confident Wee-Bey chats聽on the street with聽the uneasy D鈥橝ngelo, who symbolically stands beneath a neon sign reading “chicken,” signifying that he’s a聽coward:
The 16:9 transfer makes the frame wider, adding additional neon signs to the frame and making it harder to appreciate the tight, intentional blocking. The symbolic聽mise-en-scene remains; you just have to look harder to find it:
Like it or not, the transfer will at the very least allow new generations to appreciate arguably history’s greatest TV drama.聽No matter which format you watch,聽“The Wire” is a show for the ages.
What聽other show or film聽so seamlessly follows this many聽characters, all with interweaving story lines, all with immense character depth?聽You’d have to dig up聽Robert Altman’s “Nashville” (1975) to even come close. “The Wire” etches dozens of聽characters into our brains, from primary protagonists such as McNulty and Omar to primary antagonists such as Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell. Secondary protagonists (Kima) pull our heartstrings just as much as secondary antagonists (Snoop), bringing us pause with three little words, “How’s my hair?”
We pull for Bubbles to kick his addiction.
We root for Prezbo to聽get through to聽his students.
And聽we howl each time Clay Davis arrives to recite his trademark, drawn-out piece of profanity.
Actress Brandy Burre spoke with 91欧美激情 about her Season Three role as Theresa D’Agostino. She recalls running Tommy Carcetti’s campaign for mayor and having an affair with McNulty:
91欧美激情 also caught up with actor Tray Chaney, who played Poot, a drug dealer in the Barksdale Organization who appears in all five seasons. Chaney says the show’s fourth season, and its focus on education, inspired him to rap about staying in school in his music video “Attendance.”
“The fourth season gave me ideas for my ‘Attendance’ video, which helped parents, teachers, students and youth to understand that when young people are focused on being in school, they begin to develop a broader worldview and start to develop learning valuable social skills,” Chaney says. “The video was shot in Baltimore at the Maryland Academy of Technology and Health Science charter school because I wanted to capture the essence. Just think, the young people in the school could probably identify with a Namond, Dukie, Michael & Randy. It’s just the reality of it.”
Of course, the greatest character in the show is the city of Baltimore itself, its levels of corruption dissected through a different prism in each of the show’s five seasons.
Season One explores the drug trade in the streets and the cops on the front lines trying to stop it. Season Two explores聽how these drugs arrive into the city through聽the stevedores of the waterfront. Season Three explores the politics of lawmakers and聽law enforcement trying to contain the drug trade. Season Four explores how the broken education system creates dropout factories that churn hopeless kids back out into the drug trade.聽And Season Five explores the media reaction to crime, both for its vital fact-gathering聽and unfortunate sensationalism.
The five-season structure is the key to the show’s legacy.聽In a medium that invented the phrases “jump the shark” (“Happy Days”) and “move the island” (“Lost”), “The Wire” never overstayed its welcome. Perhaps this was due to the discipline of Simon and his fellow filmmakers. Or, perhaps it was simply because “The Wire” was always in the shadows of its older siblings聽“The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” and thus didn’t have to play the same ratings game.
Whatever the reason, this gem has flown under the radar for way too long.
No more.聽Or as a famous Baltimore poet once wrote:聽Nevermore.
If you’ve never seen “The Wire,”聽the HD restoration is the perfect excuse to discover it聽for the first time. If you’ve only seen it once, it’s the perfect chance to rewatch the show to notice聽all the symbolism you may have missed the first time around. And if you’re among the hardcore fans who have seen it multiple times, it’s the perfect time to soak it all in, now better than ever.
Technological updates like this are expected — it’s all in the game, yo.
But just like that nursery rhyme whistle on Omar’s deadly lips,聽 some things are timeless.
So when you walk through the TV garden, you better watch your HD back.
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