The Wire Thread

[Paul]

So, just caught 5 mins of The Wire, no idea which season or anything, but it was set in a diner, with "The Warehouse" being closed down and these 2 guys from the union wanting assurances from "The Greek" about being paid, since he wants to reopen "The Warehouse". So which channel is this shown on, and can you jump into it, or do you need to start from season 1; episode 1?

It was on FX and you really do need to start at the beginning.

[kop]

Season 4 of The Wire, Boys of Summer, starts September 10.

[kop]

I've just downloaded episode 4 of the new season and am just about to whatch it. Saw the first 3 this weekend, brilliant stuff as usuall. No spoilers given. Has it started in the UK yet?

[El Rojo]

I've just downloaded episode 4 of the new season and am just about to whatch it. Saw the first 3 this weekend, brilliant stuff as usuall. No spoilers given. Has it started in the UK yet?

 

A mate gave me a disc with the first three episodes over the weekend, can't wait to get stuck into it.

[Paul]

I've just downloaded episode 4 of the new season and am just about to whatch it. Saw the first 3 this weekend, brilliant stuff as usuall. No spoilers given. Has it started in the UK yet?

Not yet. I'm hoping we don't have to wait too long.

 

Apparently HBO have just commissioned a fifth season, despite ratings not being too hot. They basically said in their press release, "We don't care how many people watch it as it's the best thing that's ever been shown on American television".

[kop]

Not yet. I'm hoping we don't have to wait too long.

 

Apparently HBO have just commissioned a fifth season, despite ratings not being too hot. They basically said in their press release, "We don't care how many people watch it as it's the best thing that's ever been shown on American television".

 

Haha, that's great. I guess you have to leave out some commercial tricks when making a show like that to keep it authentic, missing out on a few viewers in the prosess. I'm glad they look past it. They are making money of it anyway so the decision was probably not that hard to make.

[grazywalker]

So what do you think about the start to the new seies, Hoddy? I'm loving the political machinations with Burrell getting manipulated all over the place and Rawls as the new (and very unpopular) Deputy Opps. It feels like another slow-burning classic with Cheese gaining a bigger role, Avon on his way out of slam, Omar great as ever and Greggs turning into a female McNulty by the second. Gotta love the "Put kids off violence by autopsy" route to keeping the streets clean, too. I've seen the first two episodes and it already feels even better than Season Two.

 

Oh, by the way - did you see The West Wing has been canned? Season 7 is the last one. Also, did you know that Sorkin left because of a crack habit? It's in today's Guardian.

I bought the first series a while ago,mainly going from what was written on here and it took me a couple of episodes t oget into but after that it was fantastic and i ended up watching the whole series in about 4 nights.I can't recall seeing series 2 in the shops or even on TV but to be fair I am a wire newcomer.Will be purchasing at some point before christmas if available though.

Just lent the first series to Uncle in law(!) in order t otry and stop him being pissed all day and night and having nothing to do. (do you see the t otry typing situation,I do that all the time when typing,fookin annoying it is,I must slow down)

I have not read any more on this thread as it may be plot spoiling.

[grazywalker]

So what do you think about the start to the new seies, Hoddy? I'm loving the political machinations with Burrell getting manipulated all over the place and Rawls as the new (and very unpopular) Deputy Opps. It feels like another slow-burning classic with Cheese gaining a bigger role, Avon on his way out of slam, Omar great as ever and Greggs turning into a female McNulty by the second. Gotta love the "Put kids off violence by autopsy" route to keeping the streets clean, too. I've seen the first two episodes and it already feels even better than Season Two.

 

Oh, by the way - did you see The West Wing has been canned? Season 7 is the last one. Also, did you know that Sorkin left because of a crack habit? It's in today's Guardian.

 

 

OK ,help me out here.I have just finished watching series 2.My marraige can now get back on track.the 1.00 am bed times can go.

 

Series 3.I know it is not in shops.Can't recall if it is on TV or are you downloading it or hh..what .

 

Have not scrolled down any further on thread as do not want to have any plot spoilers.

[MLB]

George Pellecanos, who apparently writes some episodes of The Wire, has a new novel out. It's excellent by all accounts.

[Paul]

OK ,help me out here.I have just finished watching series 2.My marraige can now get back on track.the 1.00 am bed times can go.

 

Series 3.I know it is not in shops.Can't recall if it is on TV or are you downloading it or hh..what .

 

Have not scrolled down any further on thread as do not want to have any plot spoilers.

It was on telly six months ago - FX channel. It was supposed to have been released on DVD by now - not sure what's happened to it.

[grazywalker]

It was on telly six months ago - FX channel. It was supposed to have been released on DVD by now - not sure what's happened to it.

Thank you

 

(as he scribbles Wire series 3 on kids santa list)

[Paul]

Woo-hoo!!! Here it comes!!! Tuesday 14th February is the start of the new season on UK telly on FX channel. This new season was written to be accessible to new viewers without alienating people who've been in from the start. It follows four teenage lads in a Baltimore high school and shows how they get caught up in the city's drug problems, whilst still inter-weaving the cops, dealers and politicians from seasons 1-3.

 

Also, Season 3 is out on DVD on February 5th. Get onto it, telly fans. Best thing ever made for the small screen.

[kop]

Woo-hoo!!! Here it comes!!! Tuesday 14th February is the start of the new season on UK telly on FX channel. This new season was written to be accessible to new viewers without alienating people who've been in from the start. It follows four teenage lads in a Baltimore high school and shows how they get caught up in the city's drug problems, whilst still inter-weaving the cops, dealers and politicians from seasons 1-3.

 

Also, Season 3 is out on DVD on February 5th. Get onto it, telly fans. Best thing ever made for the small screen.

 

Season 4 brilliant too. They have agreed on a 5th season aswell, can't wait.

[El Rojo]

Season 4 brilliant too. They have agreed on a 5th season aswell, can't wait.

 

Useless fact of the day. The actor who plays Tommy Carcetti is from Dublin, while McNulty is from Sheffield. Amazing accents, all considered.

 

I'd originally assumed both were not only American, but from the Baltimore area.

[Newport]

Season 4 brilliant too. They have agreed on a 5th season aswell, can't wait.

 

Unfortunately the last season I've heard.

[Paul]

Unfortunately the last season I've heard.

 

True, but it was always planned thus. If HBO had had a collective mental collapse and refused to greenlight the fifth season, David Simon was going to publish the story in novel form.

 

It's ratings in the States haven't been as great as they'd hoped (people perceive it as too complex - fucking idiots), but HBO made a statement saying, "When you're talking about the highest echelons of an art form ever created for a particular medium, you don't worry about a short term thing like audience size. This will go down as one of the greatest pieces of television ever made."

[kop]

True, but it was always planned thus. If HBO had had a collective mental collapse and refused to greenlight the fifth season, David Simon was going to publish the story in novel form.

 

It's ratings in the States haven't been as great as they'd hoped (people perceive it as too complex - fucking idiots), but HBO made a statement saying, "When you're talking about the highest echelons of an art form ever created for a particular medium, you don't worry about a short term thing like audience size. This will go down as one of the greatest pieces of television ever made."

 

 

If Shankly had been a tv-guy instead of a football manager he would've used those word exactly.

[grazywalker]

This is the best news I have heard in ages.Not only am I going to be able to buy series 3 very soon.I do not have to wait ages for series 4 .This is just super and indeed dooper.

[Paul]

This is the best news I have heard in ages.Not only am I going to be able to buy series 3 very soon.I do not have to wait ages for series 4 .This is just super and indeed dooper.

 

You'll have to work quickly on Season 3 though; there are plenty of twists and turns that'll be ruined for you if you start watching Season 4 too soon.

[grazywalker]

The Sky plus will now start paying it's way .

[Paul]

For those who haven't seen it before, check this Season 4 preview:

 

Getting wired

 

 

Hailed as the best, most sprawling TV show ever made, The Wire takes an unflinching look at the bankruptcy of the drugs war. Ben Marshall talks to the creators with a novel approach

 

Saturday February 10, 2007

The Guardian

 

 

Head east or west away from Baltimore's still relatively prosperous centre and you are suddenly struck by a curious silence. Traffic, that pervasive presence of the American city, is all but absent here. So, too, are people; unless you count the groups of alternately giggling or sullen corner boys who sell heroin and cocaine 24/7. Whole streets have been forsaken; whole city blocks are completely derelict, 47,000 homes and counting. Amid one of the highest murder rates in the western world, people are running for - literally - their lives.

 

The doors and windows of the vacant properties are boarded and the boards are often stencilled with a message so redolent of inadvertent irony you feel faintly queasy looking at it. In large neat block capitals the words read: "IF ANIMAL TRAPPED CALL 410 396-6286". Some of these crumbling shells shelter feral, frightened children abandoned by parents who have long since surrendered themselves to analgesic oblivion. And if it hadn't occurred to you before it certainly occurs to you now; Baltimore is bleeding to death. This is the subject of HBO's The Wire, a drama so rich in character and nuance, and so powerful in its anger and painful with its humour that it has been compared to the darkest classics of literature. It is no coincidence that some of America's most accomplished novelists (such as George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane and Richard Price) have written for its first four seasons. Nor was it a surprise when the New York Times wrote: "If Charles Dickens were alive today, he would watch The Wire, unless, that is, he was already writing for it." The difference in The Wire however, is that there is no kindly old gentleman to set things right.

Over the course of its four series (a fifth and final is in pre-production right now) The Wire does what no other TV programme has ever attempted to do. It immerses us in the lives of drug dealers, cops, politicians, stick-up artists and junkies. It makes their plights and conflicts so palpably real we are compelled to undergo, if not a moral crisis, then certainly a moral re-examination. Its fourth season was considered so important that when it was screened last summer in the US, both the New York and LA Times devoted their editorial columns to it. It is a show of giddying, riveting, uncompromising complexity. And makes the fullest use of its 12 episode, 12 hour format.

 

Co-creator Ed Burns explains it this way. "We can do things no other show can do. It's wonderful, because you can plan something in episode nine that doesn't blossom until 35. I remember in the second season we had this woman in the background just scrubbing her steps. And you see her in the background, just scrubbing every episode, and the drug dealers are moving closer and closer, until the final episode - they're sitting on her steps and she has a little "for sale" sign in the window."

 

The first three seasons are largely devoted to the bringing down of the ruthlessly efficient Barksdale/Bell drug crew. Avon Barksdale is a mixture of explosive violence and cloying sentimentality, forever lecturing others on family values and loyalty even as he goes about his murderous business. His infinitely more dangerous lieutenant Stringer Bell is the embodiment of Machiavellian charm and bootstrap capitalism. By the end of season three these two men, who by now we cannot help but root for, have accumulated so much cash they have set about buying up swathes of property on Baltimore's lucrative waterfront, prompting one detective to observe: "So Stringer and Avon are worse than drugs dealers; they're property developers."

 

It is this careful development of character and plot that has seen The Wire rightly compared to great epic novels. Initially billed as a cop show (a label that Ed Burns's writing partner David Simon describes as a "necessary Trojan Horse"), it bears no resemblance to any cop show you might have seen. Unlike, say, the CSI franchise, where unequivocally good and good-looking men and women swan around swish offices, and viewers are accustomed to the crime lab delivering perpetrators neatly at the end of each episode, The Wire offers no such comforts. Here the cops are, for the most part, a bunch of aggressive, workshy drunks who inhabit a filthy basement so appallingly ill-equipped they barely have a computer between them. And the cops are of course pitted against the crooks, but since we spend as much time in the company of the latter as we do the former, our sympathies are forever being tested to breaking point.

 

"That's the problem with most cop shows," explains David Simon. "It's the black hat, white hat thing. I swear if I had to write a police procedural right now, I'd put a gun to my head. On shows where only the arrest matters, where it's about good and evil, punishing crime, the poor and the rich, the suspect exists to exalt the good guys, to make the Sipowiczes [the no-nonsense cop in NYPD Blue] and the Pembletons [the no-nonsense cop in Homicide - Life On The Streets] and the Joe Fridays [the no-nonsense cop in the protoypical Dragnet] that much more moral, that much more righteous, that much more intellectualised. It's to validate their point of view and the point of view of society. So, you end up with same stilted picture of the underclass. Either they're the salt of earth looking for a break, and not at all responsible, or they're dangerous and evil and need to be punished. That's a good precedent for creating an alienated America. Dramatically I have no interest in good versus evil. I am interested in institutions, and how they seek to preserve themselves even as they are crumbling."

 

So in season three of The Wire Simon and Burns draw direct parallels between street level corruption and incompetence, and the venal indifference of Baltimore's political establishment. We move from street busts and crunchy beatings, through squalid squats, to the marbled corridors of City Hall. Every petty dealer is running some sorry little scam. The cops, however good or bad they may be, are perpetually the victims of a quota system that effectively discourages the investigation of crimes, since an investigation has necessarily to acknowledge a crime has been committed in the first place. And the dealers themselves, Barksdale and Bell, inhabit a netherworld of blood, lies and spiralling paranoia. Meanwhile the politicians, both the cynically ambitious and the well meaning, attempt to spin an unspinnable scenario. If this rings any bells then it should do.

 

"Season three," explains David Simon, "opens with two towers being blown up. This initiates a dumb and protracted war. Now people will come to me and ask, 'Is there a metaphor here?' Well what the fuck do you think? Baltimore is the star of the show, but it's not the subject. American power and American weakness is the subject. One of the subjects." The only pure, institutionally untainted character in The Wire is Omar, an openly gay, and selectively but astonishingly violent stick-up artist. Armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, he earns his money by blowing the balls off dealers and stealing their stash and cash. At one point he is seen wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "I am the American Dream."

 

"African American drug crews can be pretty homophobic," explains Burns, "so Omar could never really have belonged to any of those crews. He's out on his own."

 

"It's funny," says David Simon, "When we initially created that character people would come up to us on the street and say 'I like Omar, but why does he have to be gay?' Now everyone likes him, it's like his sexuality has become peripheral, which is very gratifying." With the likes of Omar, Bell and Barksdale, Burns and Simon have pulled off a trick few would dare attempt and even fewer could pull off with such lyrical aplomb. They have created characters that are at once loathsome and utterly fascinating. To then get us to empathise with these men is extraordinary. Equally, the cops - caught between the dealers and the vicissitudes of City Hall - are, even at their most honest and likable, grippingly dysfunctional. "

 

For this, and much more besides, The Wire is the most critically acclaimed TV programme in the history of the medium. The characters haunt you long, long after you have watched it. In season four Burns and Simon explore Baltimore's hopeless education system. The main protagonists are no longer the cops and dealers who inhabited the first three seasons, but rather the children trapped between impecunious schools and Baltimore's lucrative drug culture. "IF ANIMAL TRAPPED CALL 410 396-6286." People do occasionally call, of course. Trapped and starving dogs tend to annoy those few remaining neighbours who are either too poor, too stupid, too stubborn or too brave to move. They even annoy the child street dealers who sometimes entertain themselves by shooting the animals dead. But people don't call for the kids. The kids, it seems, are just one animal too much. *

 

· Series three of The Wire is out now on DVD. Series four starts on Tue, 10pm, FX

 

The Wire has more than 60 characters. Meet some of the main players ...

 

The street

 

Marlo Stanfield (Jamie Hector): Marlo is the new generation. He employs kids who are happy to use nail guns to get their point across and initiates a bloody and pointless war against the Barksdale/ Bell crew. As his opponent, Slim Charles, remarks: "If we fight on a lie, we fight on a lie."

 

Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris): Avon is the very volatile leader of the west Baltimore drugs crew. "I'm just a gangsta, I suppose."

 

Omar Little (Michael K Williams): Notoriously violent stick-up artist who manages to make enemies of everyone. The Wire's most feared and loved character. "It's all in the game."

 

Bubbles (Andre Royo): Inveterate thief, police informant and junkie, and thus perhaps the closest thing you get to a nice guy in The Wire.

 

Malik 'Poot' Carr (Tray Chaney): Poot is another low-level teenage dealer. Affable and sex-obsessed, Poot is also a highly effective killer. Bodie disapproves of his sexual promiscuity. "Your dick gonna look like a fried chicken wing."

 

Russell 'Stringer' Bell (Idris Elba): Stringer, Barksdale's partner, is also an economics student. String wants to legitimise the business. This invariably causes problems with Avon. "Nigga gone crazy."

 

Preston 'Bodie' Broadus (JD Williams): A teenage drug enforcer. There is no more enthusiastic advocate of corner life than Bodie. "Why the fuck would anyone wanna leave Baltimore," he asks with genuine bewilderment.

 

The law

 

Detective William 'Bunk' Moreland (Wendell Pierce): Perhaps the only black man in Baltimore who knows Pogues songs off by heart. Bunk, in addition to being a calamitous drunk, is also "good police".

 

Detective Jimmy McMulty (Dominic West): Jimmy is the "insubordinate fuck" who brings the whole Barksdale /Bell mess to the attention of his ungrateful superiors. As Bunk says to him: "You're not just any kind of asshole - you're a special kind of asshole."

 

Detective Jimmy Shakima 'Kima' Greggs (Sonja Sohn): Courageous black lesbian cop who also happens to be brilliant at meting out beatings to the local drug dealers. Often surprised by Jimmy McNulty: "Did you just call your wife a cunt?"

[Section_31]

Thats made my mind-up, while I'm waiting for Shield season five I'm gonna buy Wire season one from Amazon.

[Paul]

Thats made my mind-up, while I'm waiting for Shield season five I'm gonna buy Wire season one from Amazon.

 

I guarantee you'll be blown away by Season One. After that, you'll be hooked as it just gets better and better each season.

[Section_31]

I guarantee you'll be blown away by Season One. After that, you'll be hooked as it just gets better and better each season.

 

Dispatch estimate for these items: 13 Feb 2007

Delivery estimate: 15 Feb 2007 - 17 Feb 2007 1 "The Wire - Series 1"

Dominic West; DVD; £17.99

 

Sold by: Amazon.co.uk

 

Jobs a good'un

 

I'm skint like but who cares! There's telly to be watched!

[Paul]

And just in case I haven't laboured my point enough:

 

They call it the greatest TV series you've never seen. Now join the cult ...

 

 

The Wire is an American classic. We talk to two stars from this side of the Atlantic, and help you catch up on the action

 

Sarah Hughes, interviews by Katie Toms and Killian Fox

Sunday February 11, 2007

The Observer

 

 

Four boys in their early teens hang out in the dog days of summer, trying to have fun without getting sucked into the drug dealing that pervades every corner of their area of Baltimore. Across town, a councillor - a decent enough guy if you ignore his ruthless streak - schemes to be mayor while, back on the streets, police officers worn down with the hassle of their jobs take out their frustrations on the gang members hanging around on the corner.

 

Welcome to the world of The Wire, America's most brutal, realistic and groundbreaking television drama. It is a world defined in shades of grey, where the cops are often flawed and the gangsters can be charismatic; where the good guys don't always win and the most that anyone can hope for is to struggle through to the end of the next day.

'We do have a bleak outlook,' admits David Simon, an award-winning journalist who co-created the series with former policeman Edward Burns. 'Life isn't always easy. People don't always redeem themselves. You know the three things American television is about: kicking ass, blowing things up and finding redemption. Our show doesn't deal with any of these - apart from the ass kicking. More seriously, we aren't saying that there's an easy way out; this is what life is like for a lot of people, but they're not the sort of people you normally see on television.'

 

But then The Wire, which starts its fourth series on FX on Tuesday, is not a normal TV series. The New York Times described it as 'the closest moving pictures have come so far to the depth and nuance of the novel', while Salon.com's TV critic, Heather Havrilesky, described it as 'a Homeric epic of modern America'. It is arguably the most consistently brilliant US drama of recent times - certainly the most honest - yet it is only a cult success in America and little known over here.

 

While programmes such as The Sopranos attract huge ratings and critical acclaim, The Wire can only be seen in the UK by those lucky enough to have FX. For Simon, the reason why his programme has failed to win large audiences in the US is obvious: 'People don't want to be reminded about real life,' he says 'They don't like the fact that our show doesn't deal in good versus evil and they don't want to look at this part of America. The only time any television executive from Los Angeles is likely to come to Baltimore is if his plane gets forced to land there when he's trying to get to New York.'

 

So why start watching it now? Surely it's a bit late to catch-up. Not at all. Each series of The Wire concentrates on a different aspect of life in Baltimore. Certain characters return and storylines will resurface, but this is ultimately a series without heroes where the city itself takes centre stage. Where dramas such as 24 and Lost deal in high concepts and tangled plots, The Wire deals in character and dialogue first and allows the complex, always credible plot to grow out of that. You come to care about every character, no matter how minor.

 

That you do so is largely down to the backgrounds of the writers. The Wire's writing staff includes some of crime fiction's most acclaimed practitioners, including George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane and Richard Price. All three bring the gritty atmosphere and slow-burning characterisations of their novels to their episodes. 'We think of the show like a novel,' Simon says. 'We want the whole picture to slowly evolve. None of the writers had TV backgrounds and I think that shows in the way we write. We're not prepared to dumb down.'

 

Unlike other series that are in thrall to ratings, The Wire has always kept to its own path. It was always planned to last five series, with each revealing an aspect of the city, from the machinations at city hall through the drugs business on the streets and the workers on the docks to the failing education system, which comes under the spotlight in series four. The final season will focus on the media, Simon explains. He hopes that in doing so it will provide some sort of answer to why cities such as Baltimore are left to crumble away from the public eye. Yet he admits that The Wire is likely to retain the tag of 'greatest television show you've never seen'.

 

'People won't realise how great it was until 20 years later,' he laughs. 'They'll look back and say only one programme captured what American life was like during that time, then everyone will be dying to watch it - except for the LA TV executives ... they still won't have a clue what's going on.'

 

Aidan Gillen, who plays upstart politician Tommy Carcetti, talks about his complex character

 

Aidan Gillen is tired of talking about Queer as Folk, the show that made his name. His brilliant, lust-inducing portrayal of sexually rapacious Stuart Alan Jones is still remembered after almost a decade, but now Gillen is captivating viewers as small-time Baltimore politician Tommy Carcetti in The Wire

 

Gillen, a 38-year-old Irishman, came late to the show, joining in season three of a five-season run. He soon realised he was part of a groundbreaking series. 'It is one of the most intelligent and complex dramas coming out of America,' he says. 'It's not episodic; it's novelistic. Every season, there is a different theme such as union corruption, city politics or the education system. It's also a series that documents the black urban experience in America in depth, in honesty and without compromise. That's a big part of modern America, which seems to me to be marginalised on American TV and even in film.'

 

While starring as Mick in Pinter's The Caretaker on Broadway, a role for which he received a Tony nomination, Gillen was approached by the late Robert Colesbury, the show's executive producer, to play Carcetti, whose complexities Gillen relishes. 'We follow Carcetti's journey as a minor player in city politics to a major contender in a mayoral election. He was a young guy who was considered an upstart, who saw an opportunity to do something, maybe effect some change. We see him open up and develop a conscience. I hope he's not just coming across as smarm. I'd say he's flawed, but driven.'

 

Gillen bases himself between Baltimore, New York and London. 'My wife and children haven't moved to America. When I'm working in the States, I come back every couple of weeks to see my kids or they'll come over to see me. I've always gone where the decent role is.'

 

So does he feel there is a British and Irish invasion of American TV? 'I don't know if it's any different than it's ever been. There's always going to be actors from everywhere heading to the States because there's work there. I'm not part of any national Irish team or anything.'

 

Unlike many of his contemporaries working in the US, Gillen has embraced American roles and has the accent under his belt. Along with preparing for another season as Carcetti, he is currently rehearsing David Mamet's American Buffalo for the Gate Theatre in Dublin and last year filmed Blackout, an American indie thriller. 'I can see a pattern emerging,' muses Gillen. 'They're all American characters. I hadn't thought about that before.'

 

Dominic West is obstinate Baltimore cop Jimmy McNulty. He explains how he developed his East Coast drawl

 

'Idon't know why British actors are getting big parts in American TV shows,' says Dominic West. 'Maybe it's because we're cheap.'

 

West, 37, a seasoned theatre actor currently starring in Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll in the West End, was cast within days after he auditioned for the part of The Wire's insubordinate Baltimore cop Jimmy McNulty. 'They were desperate to find someone but I still don't know why the hell they cast me. I wasn't well suited to the part and my accent wasn't very good to start with. Perhaps they couldn't get an American actor to agree to live in Baltimore for five years.'

 

Maybe it was West's British self-deprecation that clinched it. He's brilliant as the hard-working, hard-drinking McNulty, whose active moral compass and mulish nature propels him to the heart of the corruption, while everyone around him angles for an easy life and a promotion. It is, however, disconcerting to hear a rather theatrical English boom in place of McNulty's East Coast drawl.

 

Three seasons on and he is beginning to get recognised for his work on this side of the Atlantic, where The Wire is shown on late-night cable slots. 'People in Britain are catching on now because they're watching the DVDs. In America I get stopped a lot. At first it was mainly black viewers who'd recognise me, because we didn't get much of a white audience to start with.'

 

Part of the reason for the show's underexposure was its subject matter. 'No one writes about the American underclass,' West says. 'The Wire is one of the few shows that bothers to depict how the system fails these people.'

 

Thanks to waves of critical acclaim, The Wire is reaching a wider audience. 'The critics have always backed it and loved it. The only criticisms have been that it's almost wilfully obscure and difficult to follow and the characters are too numerous, but it's not really a criticism that sticks because even the minor characters are so well drawn.'

 

The experience seems to have worked favourably for West, who is appearing in two new Hollywood blockbusters, Hannibal Rising and 300, but he is unsure. 'I could have done a lot better without it. The work has been good and I've met great people, but career-wise it's complete suicide. I suppose I can convince people I can play a hard-nosed American,' he goes on, softening a little. 'Oh, and Zadie Smith told me how much she liked The Wire the other day. If people like that stop you in the street, maybe it's not such a bad thing.'

 

The Wire 4 starts on Tuesday on FX, 10pm