Die 5. und letzte Staffel von The Wire läuft seit Anfang Januar. Inzwischen gibt es zuhauf gute Artikel im Netz, lesen sie doch mal rein, hier eine kleine Sammlung mit Zitaten:

But these are just directorial choices; the realism I’m really talking about is the way the city of Baltimore and its people are portrayed. Television is traditionally an escapist medium, and “The Wire” is its complete opposite, showing the tarnished underbelly of a beat-up American city that seems a world away from the idealized camaraderie of urban life portrayed on “Friends.” The majority of American TV shows are set in the affluent places of the country. I can’t think of too many before “The Wire” that have been set in Baltimore, Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit or St. Louis or the other American cities that have seen vast population declines in the past sixty years.

Nick Hornby: I’m really interested in your relationship with Baltimore—I mean, on a practical level. You’ve accused just about every layer of officialdom of corruption, idleness, vindictiveness, and so on… What has been the official response? Do natives write? And what does your press make of it? I don’t suppose any American city has ever had to deal with anything quite like you guys…

David Simon: The short answer is that those in the institutions depicted who represent labor or even middle management are by and large more likely to embrace the show than those people running things. The mayor—who is now our state’s governor, having been recently elevated in last fall’s election—pretty clearly hates the show. Initially, after the first season aired, he held up our permits and told city agencies not to cooperate with us, and in a subsequent conversation with me on the phone, said that Baltimore wanted to be “out of The Wire business.” I reminded him that before turning the pilot script in to HBO, I had lunch with him and his chief of staff and I told them that the next drama, should it be picked up, would be a much darker, much more realistic vision of the city and its problems. I told him that I understood that Baltimore had already had two bites of the apple with Homicide and The Corner, and that if he wanted, I could certainly set and film the story in any number of other rust-belt cities. This is true of course; the problems we are depicting are not unique to Baltimore. “No,” he said. “We’re proud of the shows. Film it here.”

One measure of the complexity of Simon’s vision is that the powerful obstructionists in The Wire aren’t simply evil people, the way they might have been in a standard Hollywood movie. While some are just inept or corrupt, most are smart and ambitious, sometimes even interested in doing good, but concerned first and foremost with their next promotion or a bigger paycheck. They are fiercely territorial, to a degree that interferes with real police work. In the premiere episode, the very idea of a separate squad to target the leadership of the city’s powerful drug gangs—which one would assume to be a high law-enforcement priority—is opposed by the police department. It’s imposed on the commissioner by order of a local judge, who’s outraged when a witness at a murder trial in his courtroom fearfully recants her testimony on the stand. To spite the judge, the commissioner staffs the unit with castoffs from various police divisions. Some of the castoffs are so alcoholic or corrupt they’re useless, but some, like the lesbian detective Shakima Greggs, or the patient, wise Freamon, or the ballsy, streetwise McNulty, are castoffs precisely because of their ability. In Simon’s world, excellence is a ticket out the door.

he Wire” débuted in June, 2002, looking more or less like a cop show. But the differences were important. It spent as much time with the lawbreakers as it did with the law enforcers. And you didn’t see the suspects through the cops’ eyes only—you saw them through their own as well. The drug trade emerged as its own intricate bureaucracy, a hierarchy that subtly mirrored that of the police department. Moreover, “The Wire” did not rely on the jumpy handheld-camera shots and the blurry “swish pans” that a lot of network cop shows had adopted. The camera remained locked, for minutes at a time, on people talking. And the story unfolded at a slower pace, too, which meant that many of the scenes elaborated on the characters and the power structures they moved within, rather than lay the pipe of plot.

What do real thugs think of the wire? und What do real thugs think of the wire part two

Podcast: The Wire's Bubbles and Bunk: Andre Royo and Wendell Pierce

Neben diesem Podcast gibt es auch noch den hervorragenden "offiziellen" Video-Podcast von HBO in dem neben diversen netten Kleinigkeiten auch mehrere halbstündige Features über die Show und sogar die erste Folge der 5. Staffel zum herunterladen bereitliegen.

Das nächste Projekt von Simon und Burns ist die Miniserie "Generation Kill" über den Irak-Krieg. Hier ein kurzer Trailer, der noch nicht viel erkennen lässt, außer dass das ganze anscheinend mit einigem Aufwand produziert wurde.