The Wire: critically acclaimed yet hardly anyone has heard of it.
Few would disagree that, in these multi-channel times of sumptuous possibility, we are living in an unrivalled golden age for television. How is it though that three of the greatest ever TV series to be aired are virtually unheard of? First, take The Wire. This brutally authentic and compellingly watchable Baltimore-based cop show is about to launch into its fourth series on the FX channel. Such restless anticipation has not been evident in my home since the birth of my first child. But barely anyone I know has heard of it. Whenever I enthuse at length about the show in my local, the reaction is invariably, "You mean Wire In The Blood, right? The one with Robson Whatisface?"
It's not that my unbridled love for The Wire is some eccentric quirk. On both sides of the Atlantic, the show has garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews. The San Francisco Chronicle rightly summed it up as "an astonishing display of writing, acting and storytelling that must be considered alongside the best literature and film-making in the modern era". And that was one of the more lukewarm reviews.
Similarly ecstatic critical plaudits have been handed out to Deadwood and The Shield. Over three captivating series, the former effectively reinvented the entire western genre by dispensing with cowboy caricatures and neatly-trimmed morality tales in favour of a biblically dense and completely riveting meditation on power, greed, lust and death. Most critics chose the adjective "Shakespearian" to describe it and, for once, they weren't kidding. Deadwood was particularly memorable for Ian McShane's monstrous saloonkeeper, the aptly-named Swearengen.
Last but not least, there's The Shield. This long-running and blisteringly paced series, about a rogue LAPD strike team, has achieved the distinction of fashioning itself as the televisual equivalent of the world's finest cocaine. Meaning that anyone who sampled it could not get enough of it.
So why aren't these series as popular as they should be? Some blame their banishment to obscure TV channels, as though Five, Sky One and FX are only viewable via a satellite dish the size of the Hubble telescope. Perhaps the true reason for their criminal lack of exposure is that all three shows started out as tightly wrought ensemble pieces that dispensed entirely with name actors. Unless you count McShane, who once played an antique dealer in Lovejoy - a role in which he was never called upon to deliver lines of such sheer, unmissable poetry as in the immortal Deadwood.
