Some day when I am in good paen-writing form, I will extol the many virtues of my new favorite television show, The Wire. It is an astonishing achievement, both morally and artistically. But paen-production is on the back-burner for the moment, and you really shouldn’t miss a single episode. So read Jacob Weisberg’s review of the current season on Slate, and then hustle off to the video store to rent the first three seasons on DVD.
If you need more convincing, look here, here and here.
The last of these articles, from Newsday, begins as follows: “A critic for this paper once declared “The Wire” “the greatest dramatic series ever produced for television” and as the fourth season gets under way Sunday night, there’s no reason to quibble with that assessment.”
I imagine that the creators of the series would balk at this characterization, but if The Wire isn’t urban ministry, I don’t know what is.